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THE 



Rising Faith. 



BY 



C ? A, BARTOL, > 

AUTHOR OF "RADICAL PROBLEMS." 



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BOSTON: 4 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1874. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF C ONGR ESS 

WASHINGTON 



<> 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

C. A. BARTOL, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Stereotyped by John C. Regan, 19 Spring Lane, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Seeker . 1 

II. The Seer 27 

III. The Secret Power 53 

IV. Sincerity 76 

V. Sex Ill 

VI. Teaching . 142 

VII. Training .157 

VIII. Forms . . . . . . . .186 

IX. Values . . . . . . .206 

X. Validity . .224 

XI. Personality . . . ... . 239 

XII. Prayer 279 

XIII. Unity 303 

XIV. Survival 336 

XV. Signs 351 

XVI. Ideas 375 

(iii) 



THE RISING FAITH. 



1. 

THE SEEKER. 

WE are born to interrogate ; and the test of a man 
is what are his questions ; for the measure of 
diginity and depravity is, in the pedler's old cry, if 
grandly interpreted, What do you lack ? The lower the 
creature, the better it is content, the less being the in- 
quiry and fewer the wants ; albeit the extent of our 
researches and satisfactions is the gauge of our worth. 
Yet discreet asking is not only, as Bacon says, half of 
science, but of morals and religion ; and that but one 
tithe in us is attainment and the remainder pursuit, is 
our title of honor and tenure of life ; for Archimedes 
could complain he might better not have been than be 
slain amid his problems unsolved. Only on this Ja- 
cob's ladder of existence, let us know our direction, if 
our face be set up or down ; for, save by a falsehood in 
nature, aspiration cannot be finally balked. 

But what is to seek ? If America will go to the con- 
fessional, great defects she must own ; for truth no tri- 
bunal, in letters no criticism, no standard of art, at 
any Paris or Vienna exhibition only some mechanical 

a) • 



2 THE RISING FAITH. 

success from the farm or mill ; in the crude taste of the 
majority all high achievements swamped, the multitude 
cruel, because unwise. It was a high-water mark of 
civilization, a coast-tide of philanthropy in war, when 
the Prussians sent home French prisoners with exact 
billets of surgical operations performed, finding their 
patients in their foes. Our progress scarce deserves 
the name. In our best circles there is little culture, 
and the educated face or manner is rare. We have 
good gardens and cattle-shows, but of high art almost 
none. Inferiority of speaker, penman, painter or musi- 
cian carries off the prize. When a great pianist re- 
gretted such rollicking pieces at concerts as the Carnival 
of Venice, the violinist in the troupe said he must stoop 
for popularity and pay. The same motive of echo 
accounts for acres of strange regions of land or sea on 
the canvas, with no expression of humanity or truth. 
In theology, politics, and law, we are professional advo- 
cates with no make-weight of intellectual conscience. 
We shout liberty or death, and have liberty and death. 
Wild theories prevail, with no criterion or assay. Said 
Rubinstein, Let not the mediums tip the tables, but 
give us a Tenth Symphony of Beethoven or new Sixtine 
Madonna ! Raw with wounds, civil war has made the 
republic old. But for the result of experience or fruit 
of suffering we wait. The only doubt of our projected 
museum is whether it would meet an} 7 general want, or 
there is genius enough to make it worthy of existence 
and support. We have photography plenty, and topog- 
raphy enough, in gilded frames ; but, if picture means 
the soul and expression of man and nature, how many 
names among us of artists does it represent ? First, 



THE SEEKER. 3 

the wilderness ; then war ; third, wealth ; a long step 
still to art. 

Nor is there airy fit literary expression. We have a 
brood of newspapers and magazines, without an organ 
like a judge to pronounce the sentence that wins respect. 
All are committed to some party-interest, rest on a 
monej^-basis, and watch a subscription-list. Every 
sheet might be called the Times; none of the eterni- 
ties. In our newspapers we find ourselves. They are 
the diaries we keep. It is not the fault, but merit, of 
journalism to be the public mirror. As such, it is an 
immense benefit and power superior to all other agen- 
cies combined. Yet, as the press can be criticised only 
in its own columns, and is itself the instrument of a 
constituency unseen, it can be both insolent and sub- 
sidized, a despot and a slave at once. We have the 
noble prints and the base ; but if there be no such 
truth-tellers and saints, there are no such liars and 
criminals with impunity as types ; nor could any phil- 
anthropy meet a so signal, humane, and patriotic want 
as the establishment of an organ, independent of stock- 
holders and subscribers, to stand for the moral senti- 
ment like a Hebrew seer. In our colleges and schools, 
the observing and intuitive faculties for what is real 
within us and actual without suffer neglect. With the 
noble scholars and good lawyers in our offices and 
courts, we have generated a set of able and adroit 
monsters who too often win the palm by their forward 
pushing, while unpretending worth is put aside. In 
Congress or legislature, questions are determined by 
personal motives, aside from the merits of the case. 
Purchase of votes is too common to be a flagrant crime. 



4 THE RISING FAITH. 

There is more courage of opinion and candor of ex- 
pression among our English cousins than here. Dar- 
win and Spencer, and Huxley and Greg, and Goldwin 
Smith, can publicly differ with refreshing frankness and 
no ill blood. Somewhere always is the idol that 
nobody must touch. Slavery was our political fetish. 
We worship the Bible still. Till lately, the divinity of 
Christ could not calmly be discussed. Doubt of the 
existence of God was a crime. We will not let the 
grounds of marriage be probed. We have yet to learn 
that nothing is sacred but that Thought which is the 
image of the Holy in the human breast. 

But let us not ask a question for the question's sake. 
Inquiries must not all be confounded as of equal weight. 
In military phrase, one of them ranks another. Is 
your inquiry a star in the firmament or an asterisk on 
the page? All problems must be handled, but accord- 
ing to their dignity on the scale. Was the earth flung 
off from the sun, and shall it&crib be its tomb? Find 
out, O astronomer, if you can ; meantime let me lodge 
in and describe the house, to rescue some memoiy- 
sketch when it is razed or burned up. After me the 
Deluge; but, though the flood overhang, I will cultivate 
the soil to-day. Wrongly the preacher scores those who 
train their vines on Vesuvius heedless of the volcano. - 
An eruption is at hand on all our fields and toils ; 
nevertheless, produce the utmost, and keep on till the 
earth split ! Comte's Positivism charms, not that it 
deeply considers or solves the riddle ; but, though with 
superficial answers, lays the stress on quality. Father 
Taylor stopped a curious moralist's conceit of explana- 
tion, with the cry : Too far off, — the King's business 



THE SEEKER. 5 

requires haste. The woman who deliberates is lost ! 
Just as often the man. Logic mutilates ; the whole 
being should act. Nobody does anything well who has 
to refer for it to his head. The design and will are 
there ; but I notice, said one, that the great performei 
on an instrument plays from his spinal marrow. The 
journey for feeling is too long from the brain. So the 
preacher does best without notes, like buckets, that 
take time to be dropped and drawn up. The passage 
in my sermon remarked upon is the unwritten sentence. 
Science teaches that the essential man is not in one 
nervous mass held by the skull, but in scores of gang- 
lionic centres all over the frame, the whole connection 
of hemispheres of this fleshly globe. The soul is 
atmosphere, not core. So we find virtue in the imme- 
diate reply, the stroke of wit for which no more than 
lightning we wait. Such the answers of Jesus and 
Paul, and every prophet. You will put on your con- 
sidering cap ? I do not care what is smoked slowly 
out of it, but for y our instantaneous impression. In 
any emergency we admire the succor that comes at 
once, as with the man that put oil under the boiler and 
got up steam quick enough to save the overset sailors 
from sinking the third and last time. The staid citizen 
went not into the frog-pond after the drowning child 
because he could not swim ; but my gray-haired friend 
did not calculate the depth. Quickness is genius. 
Yfhen one praised Bonaparte's combination, Channing 
said, No — intuition ! Such perception and resolution 
make blood and spirit one. This is the grace of Christ, 
that, like his seamless vesture, there was no parting 
his body and soul, and the same inseparableness is 



THE RISING FAITH. 

our share of the atonement. By indirection we cannot 
find direction out, but by John the Baptist's burning 
and shining light. Engineers drill the Alps to a math- 
ematical line, which for all manhood is the shortest dis- 
tance between two points. 

Therefore the hatefulness of compounding and com- 
promise. Your amiable disguise is like the taste of 
wheat bread made neutral with sugar. I desire quality, 
and to meet people of quality, about whose persuasion 
or purpose I am in no doubt. They prevail because 
they repeat and never cancel their blows, but move 
steady to their one object, while duplicit}^ shuffles, is 
self-contradictory and weak. Double and devil are the 
same word. In cards the deuce is lowest, and the ace 
takes the whole pack. Genuineness is admirable even 
in creatures of dread, — a Bengal tiger, a lion with no 
ambiguity on his royal brow, a Modoc Indian proud of 
the cunning of which he makes a principle. Captain 
Jack is the most artful and least disingenuous of men, 
conceals no motive, though he baffled our troops at the 
lava-beds and swears he killed not Canby, though ad- 
mitting he is responsible for his death. 

How much is there of you, the amount of soul, is the 
question. Quantity is quality, — as Jesus came for our 
abundant life. I will tell you who will live longest, 
says the man with the spirometer and lifting index on 
the Common. To authentic merit what does echo or 
detraction signify? After exquisite handling and bow- 
ing of the violoncello, one said : I make no pretensions 
in music, so there is nothing for anybody to take away. 
Let us hold flattery and slander at an equal rate. The 
vertical beam is better than the shadow of reputation 



THE SEEKER. 7 

that lengthens as the sun sinks low. Nobility is insen- 
sibility to opinion. The actor, absorbed in his part, 
does not hearken for the clap or forsake his imperson- 
ation one moment to acknowledge applause. The little 
boy, drilling a brick with a nail, said he was only mak- 
ing believe ; and Joseph Jefferson's make-believe as 
Rip Van Winkle is more substantial than the whole 
character of one who lives with an eye to effect. Over- 
come with causes or ideas, one is indifferent to conse- 
quences. When a man, earnest for a certain measure, 
was told his good name had been called in question, he 
answered that he cared not for his name. It must look 
out for itself; but he was not going to have his bill 
defeated. 

But the claim of any question must be measured ; first, 
b}^ the faculties it employs. To discriminate properties 
of spirit requires the highest parts. It is a nice and 
honorable task to classify animals, to reckon the age 
of the globe and the date of man upon it, to learn how 
the coral reefs were reared, and what fine insect-dividers 
rounded the Pacific lagoons, to fix the cause and rate 
of motion of icebergs and glaciers, to reconstruct the 
vessels that transported the boulders, and chisels that 
scratched the primeval rock, to map altering zones of 
climate and belts of animal and vegetable life, to see 
the entire fish in one of its scales, to discover the liquid 
or frozen circle of the pole, or the hard or liquid centre 
, of the globe. What senses, understanding, memory 
and logic such studies require ! But a greater gift of 
rarer exercise, is in the observer as his own object. 
We complain of the naturalist if he leaves out himself 
and abdicates the human distinction. The beast can- 



8 THE RISING FAITH. 

not turn round and look within. No animal invented 
or comprehends the use of a mirror, though the cock 
struts, and the peacock spreads his tail beside the glass}' 
lake. Animals perceive and arrange certain phenom- 
ena. When the red columbine holds down its trumpet- 
cup, the bee climbs into it from beneath. The ant 
is an architect adapting his house to the site. The 
horse chooses his road in the dark, through intricate 
woods, when the driver, at his wit's end, throws the reins 
on his neck. He reasons about signs of danger on his 
way. The steed in ni}' barn stops at his supper to con- 
sider noises and sights, and with nose and tongue in- 
forms me of his appreciation. The chamois, animated 
snow-flake on the sunlit slope, needs no railing to keep 
it from falling from the crags. The cow in the pasture 
lays out the grounds of her confidence more precise 
than a surveyor's chain. If the peck for the colt is in 
one hand, the halter in the other must be held behind 
the back. But all these creatures give small token of 
ability to reflect or act on themselves. They are nearer 
relations to the scientist than to the artist or the seer. 
The sheep-clog is a strategist or marshal, but not of the 
family of poets or saints. No usher at a concert, or 
drill-sergeant in a muster-field, in assigning places, re- 
sisting intrusion, and roping in the ranks, could excel 
this four-legged assistant to whom the shepherd del- 
egates offices beyond his own skill. But in his range 
of power he is hemmed in, as by crooked lines on the 
hill-side is his woolly charge. Are there signs of obei- 
sance in the faithful servant that guards his master's 
wagon and goods, or watches at the door, and like a 
born aristocrat can tell a beggar from a prince, and sort 



THE SEEKER. 9 

out fine clothes from rags ? If man be the clog's god, 
what a poor figure of deity compared with that, our 
feeling after which is nobler than gazing through 
an} r microscopic lens or astronomic tube ! A certain 
preacher goes every day into a room without pictures 
or books ; and his household know not how he spends 
the hour. I was told of an essaj-ist, that he improves 
his time in an empty chamber musing alone. Some 
Holy of Holies, entrail of Jewish temple, minaret of 
mosque, corner of the dwelling, David's palace-top, 
Peter's house-roof, Isaac's ramble, seclusion from all 
flesh, even one's own, the soul needs for its search. 
Beyond outward expeditions and explanations, it uses 
a loftier faculty than in tracing orbits above, or boring 
the crust below\ or trawling shells from the mudd}^ bot- 
tom of the deep. You scorn the mystic piety in vain ! 
Declare with Mansell or Hamilton that the Infinite and 
Unconditioned cannot be grasped, the spirit witnesseth 
with our spirit still. Jonathan Edwards proves neces- 
sity ; but we know we are free, said Dr. Johnson, and 
that is the end of it. The divine self-consciousness in 
the human breast waits not for logical sufferance. The 
prayer-gauge dangles in a fathomless sea. What is 
the world but an abstract impossibility? Yet, said 
Galileo, it moves, though nobody can explain the first 
push ; and the creatures theology calls worms, soar 
and sing as imps and embryos of seraphs. In disap- 
pointment and distress, creeping from the dusty cage 
of the cradle to the grave, as ants from one grain of 
sand to another, w r e claim to be akin with the Eternal. 
This reappearing faculty cannot be dismissed as a 



10 THE RISING FAITH. 

fancy, — nor will be subordinated or outgrown. It is 
our sublimest force. 

But while inward seeking employs the best powers, 
it finds the clearest answers. Physiology is deputy, 
but not chief justice. I cannot analyze the sentiment 
which, like magnetism, pervades the world, but I feel 
its support at every step. 

Himself from God he could not free. 

Atheism professed is only rejection of some defini- 
tion. But what least thing, that we are drawn by, can 
we define? With what graduated trust the heifer 
steps till she licks my hand, and lets me pinch her 
neck and pla}~ with her budding horns ! Is there no 
reality in the relation because it is not understood? 
When the train thunders along, I see a process no 
more genuine, however easier to state in terms. 

A principle cannot be verified by what is below it, 
and Infinit}' has no certificate. Yet it is one motion in 
many things, — the wind, the smoke, the cloud, the 
tide, swaying branches and waving grass, the moon 
getting the start of the sun in their blue circus, the 
opening leaves and blossoms, the summer-beam at 
play with the shadow or under the stream, the pencil 
in my hand and the throb in my heart, 3-onder 
thread of the moon hauling the sea to its highest point 
in tides of a double miracle each day beyond the pas- 
sage of the Jordan, the water turning to wine in a 
thousand vine} r ards, and a millionfold more than was 
held in those Hebrew jars ; all movement, but no 
mover? That is " the breath without lungs." How 
many proverbs hint the personal force ! Handle it 



THE SEEKER. 11 

with care or it will hurt somebody: if I come I shall be 
worst devil of all, and there ivill be damages to pay : 
beware of the thirdsman; — such sayings suggest some- 
thing more potent than any powder ; so sharp that 
every general truth touches me in all my relations. 
What preacher but has had surprises of irritating 
hearers he never thought of, who supposed they were 
aimed at by the bow drawn at a venture. Every ran- 
dom bullet strikes. I once expounded good and bad 
temper from a Scripture text, under the title of The 
Tivo Winds, and raised a tempest about nry own ears. 
The devil is here; I mention no names, said the radical 
sage, peering round with his blue eyes. What fatality 
arrested the glance at one spot ! What audacity in a 
perception ! One compliments an adversary of his 
cause as Satan, with the coolness of classif}'ing a bug. 
I held up the standard of chastity, and nominated no- 
bod}^ ; yet I was reproved as referring to a particular 
scandal. A candidate for preeminent license at once 
appeared. Induction leads to deduction, and truth is 
never more vague than electricity in a thunderbolt. 
Hearing the clap, we wonder where it fell. The pun- 
gent orator is asked why he cannot talk about some- 
thing else than justice ; it is so personal. It gets into 
families. It is the sword sundering houses Jesus 
brought. Let us have the doctrine of charity, the 
wounded cry, as if kindness and equity were not the 
same, or anything could be such a pest as dissolute 
love ! A rotting lily, others as well as Shakespeare 
have noticed, makes a worse odor than withered grass. 
The smell of hay is pleasant, — not of the churchyard 
or the morgue. The censor has heat, but no hate, — 



12 THE RISING FAITH. 

necessity drives him. All must be searched. Ob- 
sequious writers and conspirators of guilt rush to the 
sinner's defence. Society is a joint-stock company to 
protect certain crimes. He must be an unquestionable 
villain who, when he is acquitted, is not cheered. 
Nevertheless, the self-executing statute will fetch us 
all to our knees. Not at the individual, but the evil 
it aims. 

No philosophy can cover our experience. The 
" golden vials, full of odors, which are the prayers of 
saints," were mined, and wrought, and filled, where 
no mariner sailed or s;eolo2;ist went down. The Beaut i- 
ful Soul, in Goethe's chapter of her Confessions, de- 
clares that the power she sought never failed ; and what 
history of Gibbon or treatise of Paine outweighs such 
an artist's romance? Milton's " Live Coal," or " Sweet 
Refreshing," is as good evidence as any of Darwin's 
analogies, and has^ no gaps of imperfect record to be 
filled. Is it to an}' materialist, or to Raphael, Michael 
Angelo, Dante, and Shakespeare, we go for a fine 
touch? The blaze of the sun, and of him who casts it 
for a shadow, ma}' dazzle and hinder sight ; j-et 
what but some response to every wronged sufferer 
explains the miracles of patience on crosses, amid 
faggots, under noose and axe, which make so tawdry 
the blasting of a barren fig-tree, and the money in a 
fish's mouth? Who but must repeat Christ's com- 
posure beneath accusation heavier than the beams he 
bore to Calvary? In a curious experiment with glass 
tubes one sound is made to still another which it 
meets on the way ; and our voice, encountered by the 
divine, dies without a murmur in our throat. What 



THE SEEKER. 13 

unseen hand holds back that we would raise for a 
blow, so that the boy Theodore Parker cannot strike 
the turtle ? Say what sceptics will, books of martyrs 
and sentences of old devotion are no counterfeit or 
play ; and what Tauler or Thorn as-a-Kempis wrote is 
worth reading, as well as the Report of the British 
Association. I know not about the warm circumpolar 
sea ; only that amid field-ice of misfortune, and at the 
frosty centre of friends' indifference, is navigable 
water and a temperate clime, — in the heart and axis of 
the world's aversion, and under the six months' night 
of unpopularity, is light like that of the curious sub- 
stance the condition of whose shining is pitch dark. 

The supersensual things alone are of intrinsic mo- 
ment. We can get along without knowing about 
North-west passage or spontaneous generation, de- 
velopment or evolution, our chronological kinship to 
angel or brute. But when, like Othello, we are " per- 
plexed in the extreme," or "the world has been too 
many for us," as to dying Tulliver, in the tale ; when 
love becomes enmity, and confidence is cool, and the 
earth is a blind alley, and our wa} T , like Job's, is hid 
and hedged up till a curse lights on the day of our 
birth, and we hunt round for the grave, then insanity is 
not knowing which way to turn, and suicide is inability 
to take it, or our conclusion that there is none to take. 
But not a case of calamity in which interior perception 
is not poise and peace. Call it delusion and unscien- 
tific, yet the man says : No matter, be it sunlit hill to 
tread, or valley of the shadow of death to totter down, 
I have a staff more than my own strength. Max Miil- 
ler affirms language as the distinction between man 



14 THE RISING FAITH. 

and beast ; if any animal could name its own place in 
the scale, as a horse or dog, it would be a man, and 
the line erased. If an animal had the consciousness 
which words of devotion express, the balance for flight 
of the soul when the body fails, it would be an angel. 
It is all perception. Wait till you have proved the 
God you lean on, and the heaven you go to? It is 
atheism, not only actual, but on principle, to subject 
the Divine Being to the test of our sense or under- 
standing. It asks not leave of them to be, or be 
believed in. Their hill-top is not high enough for 
any Moses to see Canaan from. I can wait for your 
answer to ury question, }'our appearance at the station, 
or return from the door ; but some things I cannot wait 
for. John Quincy Adams, clving, says : This is the last 
of earth; I am composed. He must give this trust who 
has it ! I talk with nry sick friend, for whom life and 
death hang a doubtful beam ; but the swaying does not 
reach her fearless mind. How is she so strangety even 
for either fate ? From no influence of church or priest ; 
she has heard no public prayer which was not an offence. 
Her state avouches itself. Only insolence cross-ques- 
tions tranquillity. I die content, said the expiring 
saint. But I wanted to get your views of death, 
answered the parson, so stout and well-fed. Turn the 
dogmatist out of doors, and let the saintly mother die 
in peace ! Leave her to her assumption, as the Virgin 
was left. Every thinker starts somewhere from a posi- 
tion granted which he did not establish. Is matter your 
first term? But who and what are you that make it 
such ? Does matter observe matter, or do you despair 
of self-knowledge? Have you come out of the clod 



THE SEEKER. 15 

you survey ? To ask is to answer the question. Fancy 
what you mean by matter interrogating itself! 

No prospect seems essential to this trust. Shall a 
thread of recollection knit the earth-life to the indubit- 
able immortality of love and truth? It is an inter- 
esting question, but not the first. Confidence in the 
Power that made us is the inner robe, and future expec- 
tation the overcoat. Is the Maker bound in justice to 
give us another chance ? I have had my pay in ad- 
vance. But there seems some mistake in the hand- 
writing if here be the end ; for the invitation includes 
more than a seat at the board. If God deceive us, sa}^s 
Goethe, it is well. But I would rather lose my ex- 
istence than for him m}~ respect, and so cannot think 
heaven a mirage, or see Tantalus on the circle of the 
sky, or fancy i; false waters of thirst" in the river I 
drink from, or imagine the promises fading rain- 
bows without one solid arch, or anticipate a bursting 
of the universal credit in final bankruptcy, while led 
into more than I hoped by every lure from the mines 
of the earth, treasures of the sea, glories of the firma- 
ment, or faculties of the soul. The notes of God have 
eternal date, and do not run on time. Calculation 
diminishes with multiplication of da}'s and years. Im- 
mortality does not dawn. It overleaps all to-morrows ; 
it makes each one part of the whole. I do not entertain 
the question of duration more than God does. He must 
have lost his eternity before he could query about it. 
What has he to do with it* was the answer to one mar- 
velling that Ephraim Peabody referred not to dying. 
Xothing concerns the spirit but growth, of which it 
doubts not more than does a flower or tree. " In my 



16 THE RISING FAITH. 

Father's house are many mansions " ; plenty of room ! 
Said Channing, minds do not, like plants, interfere. 
The base does not choke the noble seed. The self-sown 
oaks under my window dwarf the worthless vegetation ; 
and against errors ideas prevail. Goethe would have 
another body because he had so faithfully studied in 
the first. But love is a stronger reason that our author 
will fight the battle we seem to lose. One thing, affec- 
tion alwaj^s extinguishes doubt. Yet duty before des- 
tiny ! These people, sa}'s Rubinstein, who ask where 
from and where to, I find it difficult to be with. " There 
are questions, but no answers," he replies, when the 
album is offered for him to write in. Not how or ichy, 
not where or when, but ichat is the true inquiry. If, as 
said the Northman, we are but birds at night that fly 
through a festive hall among the lamps from darkness 
into darkness, what shall we be or do while we stay? 
That scientist's relations to his wife, 3'ou tell me, were 
scandalous. What signifies then his dredging the sea, 
timing the glaciers, tracing the granite-scratches, or 
measuring the frosty nightcap seen through the millen- 
nial winter by the sphere ! What care we for your 
specialty? Your deportment is more than your de- 
partment. To the dispute about the origin and com- 
position of conscience my rejoinder is : Are 3011 
conscientious? A man tells us where he got his tool 
or machine at a bargain ; but of more concern is how 
does he use or run it? The battered vessel that has 
paid for herself is finer than the racing yacht that after 
her profitless cruise fires off her vainglorious gun. I 
wish, said my rock-blaster, they would put the pow- 
der where it might do some good ! I admire your 



THE SEEKER. 17 

inlaid table less than the pine board jou feed me from ; 
and prize the woollen shawl I w r ore to the Danube, be- 
yond the silk brocade that hung all the while in my 
garret. Professor Fowler has examined your head and 
finds the developments magnificent. But unless for 
good use, the skull the anatomist lectures from is of 
more value. The teller pays }^our indorsed note ; but 
the Lord will protest that of unhallowed pleasure what- 
ever companions had their share. Not whence I came, 
but 'what I become, is the question. No matter about 
far-off cousins ; let a gorilla be my ancestor if I love 
God and serve my kind ! In Shakespeare's play the 
strong-limbed Bastard asks a blessing on his unknown 
progenitor, and scorns as a cipher the lawful heir. 
Sweetness and Light, a sweet reasonableness, are the 
phrases Matthew Arnold rings all the changes on, for 
w 7 hat we want in State and Church. But, as burdocks 
and brambles grow in the angles of the temple-walls, 
so how the bigot and fanatic thrive, sour and sharp 
within, watering the weeds, not the flowers, of their 
minds ! I found it hard to clear a thicket of the thorny 
smilax ; but the bull-briar of censoriousness is tougher 
to extirpate. That cultivator with his lawn, garden, 
and greenhouse, has raised eveiy thing but himself into 
a gentleman. He is a cactus that has not yet blos- 
somed. Did the man that aimed his gun at night 
by mistake at one of his own family reflect that all 
creatures are our relations? Had the landlord who 
ignorantly warned off the Boston Mayor with his dis- 
tinguished guest from his avenue, read his Bible about 
entertaining in strangers angels unawares? Human 
ungraciousness is no grace of God ! We distinguish 
2 



18 THE RISING FAITH. 

quality ; but wiry run from toads and snakes, or say 
you like not a clog and cannot endure a cat ? There 
are worse things in } r ou to which you have no antip- 
athy. My farmer pulled the long, yellow roots of a 
prickly barberry-bush from the clefts of a blasted ledge 
many feet below the surface, and said, If it had been 
anything good it would never have grown so. Do you 
call gentleness and courtesy flowers ? But the hand- 
somest flowering thing is an apple-tree ; and winning 
manners imply delightful deeds. 

Quality, or what we are, is more than what we think 
of God or Christ. Deny them wholly, yet you are 
dearer to them both than the stiff believer, if } T ou 
work more b} T the love, without which faith is refuse. 
When Luther called James's Epistle straw, it would 
seem, unless he could see the flail in motion, he cared 
not for the threshed wheat. Though he doubted thy 
being, said Theodore Parker of the dead atheist, yet 
he kept thy law ; and if such righteousness be filthy 
rags, let the saints have all the clean old rotten linen 
of creed to themselves ! Through underrating morals, 
immorality creeps into the church till no charge of cor- 
ruption hurts a man's standing if he interpret the 
atonement and trinity right. So let us say, character 
first, destiny afterwards. Vain is belief without worth, 
though the worthless corse be followed with the intermin- 
able cortege of a Celtic funeral. The soul is a stereoscope, 
in which some one behind handles the slides, for we 
cannot account for the pictures. The dullest of us is 
under control and in a trance ; why talk of a few in- 
spired persons ? I am a servant, soldier, minute-man, 
with no concern what the disposition of me shall be. 



THE SEEKER. 19 

He that made me must look out for his own invest- 
ments, for he understands his own interest. Having a 
good understanding with him, I am in no trouble about 
my end ; nor shall I advise the head of the house as to 
his business. He knows his own constitution best, said 
one, of the beast he was was swiftly borne by ; let the 
power that carries me keep its own pace, whether I 
travel forever or be dropped on the ground. 

But why is God in his being and purpose so hid? 
Why has your child's toy secret chambers and springs, 
but that he may search them out ? Heaven teases us 
with the inquisitiveness we torment each other with, 
that the spur for progress may hot fail. But let us be 
silent where we do not comprehend. God must dislike 
being mentioned so often and talked about so much. 
When a zealot declared at much length the possibility 
of perfection, a good woman said : Do you not think 
there are excellent people who say nothing about it? 
The devoutest worship never had speech, sabbath or 
shrine, because what is unseen, unspoken, and unheard, 
is the genius of divinity. As doves are scared by 
noise, and the fairies fled at a step, the Holy Ghost is 
not happy in our orders of service, and abides no long 
prayer. He comes not at sound of bell, and waits 
not for the conclusion of the liturgy. As some great 
man shuns the blazing reception, and drives round 
some other way, so the Lord is a private person, and 
retires to your closet for an interview. All earthly 
relations are unsatisfactory, because he is our satisfac- 
tion. Was any mortal ever content with his fellow or 
friend? IIoiv I adored that man or ivoman, is the 
bitter cry after the disillusion, which is common as the 



20 THE RISING FAITH. 

illusion or Oriental Maya that wraps all. But what a 
shallow heart that an} r mortal can fill ! Ask me not to 
trust you wholly ; confide not utterly in me, for every 
line of human love touches bottom, and we are off 
soundings only in the deep blue water of his goodness. 
You were wounded to the quick by some slight ? What 
business to be so wounded, when he, the invulnerable, 
is your quick ! No peace but at the centre. Dis- 
gusted with old parties, we form new ; and now what 
good times we shall have with this governor and that 
radical leader to put a new face on Church and State ! 
Sing jubilee : for the incorruptible have met at last, — 
to develop, how soon, fresh jealousies and low aims. So 
Jesus did not commit himself to men, knowing what 
was in man* Be no partisan, however nicknamed ; 
for God is of no party. No Eden but the serpent 
crept into, and never paradise enclosed without that 
trail and temptation. A worthy clergyman said : I 
have identified nryself with my church. But with no 
ministry, or membership, or Christian name can we stop, 
following the finger that beckons and the foot that 
moves without pause. Napoleon called Madame de 
Stael a phraseuse. So is every talker. I must rely on 
myself, on the self, on the rectitude of my inten- 
tions and whispers of duty in 1113' breast, and nobody 
shall fix, nor will I fashion my final creed. A wealthy 
citizen frankly proposes to buy a doctrine in a neigh- 
boring institution for a hundred thousand dollars. 
But as Simon Magus could not purchase the Holy 
Ghost, sq the Episcopal trustees choose not to have 
their faith quoted with Erie, the Ocean Telegraph, and 
Hoosac Tunnel, and doubt about transmuting gains of 



THE SEEKER. 21 

successful speculation into the gold of the temple. 
Let the stones in Bunker Hill monument honestty stay 
which. Fanny Ellsler danced up with the charity of her 
flying feet ; but ho purse can confine the Real Presence 
to the bod}' and blood of Christ ; and when we try to 
construe Christianity by a vote, we forget how our 
religion would have been sold out at its birth, and 
could be bought out now by any majority or plurality 
rule. One seeker with news of God and tidings from 
heaven, tingling from the telegraph that terminates in 
a loving and lowly heart, outbids every decree of the 
synod. When I see people following their leaders in a 
convention or association so meekly, I think of the 
string of horny fishes, called horse-shoes, in the waters 
of a shallow beach, attached one to another in nice 
gradation of size, the largest drawing all the rest at 
his tail. Let us decline being tugged and towed like 
a boat at some steamer's stern in spiritual mendicancy. 
Think and act for yourself. We have heard enough 
how religion soothes, let us know how it urges ! The 
sheep in the pasture, the ruminating ox and cow, are 
quietists ; the slow-footed horse I hired must have been 
contemplative ; and these inefficient saints cannot be 
or have the salt in themselves Jesus spoke of, who 
do not earn the salt in their bread. How we are hurt 
by the notion of God's rest on the seventh day, doing 
nothing since the world was made, six thousand years 
ago, and after the Hebrew and Christian canon was 
closed, unable to open his mouth ! Old texts and 
transactions suffice not for present food. I heard a 
sermon oh the Bethairv pictures, putting Mary's trust 
above Martha's work. But I said Martha's was fret- 



22 THE RISING FAITH. 

work, and Mary in that establishment was the main- 
stay, who could not take off her hand but all went 
wrong. Oh, holy preacher, do you think it worth your 
while to disparage morals with these scandals in your 
church ? Neglect not in your doctrines current events ! 
Labor and capital, temperance, communism, free love, 
not circumcision, passover, and meat offered to idols, 
are our questions. While a man calls mistress the 
woman over whose property and person he plays tyrant 
and master ; while a woman puts vanity for humility, 
and proves that if the good of her sex are the credit of 
God's work, the unreasonable female is the most tor- 
menting thing in his creation ; and while parental 
obedience is the millennium for which all juvenility 
looks and longs ; while young men .declared they did 
not wish to extend the list of their female acquaint- 
ances, and young America himself is as great a trial as 
the girl of the period, we certainly see our own stint 
before us. But all disappointment is direction to 
the unfailing good, as the drought that turns the ditch 
into an ash-heap, and prints the catties' hoofs into the 
baked clay, drives us to the deeper wells. Anything 
lost, how we seek for, be it a child for which the town- 
crier once rang his bell, a missing man or vessel, 
Sir John Franklin or the crew of the Polaris, or the 
young woman lured, away from home. With w^hat 
agony I sought after the sleeve-button in the clefts, 
and the ring that had dropped from my finger in the 
rocking ship ! An ametlryst fell from a bather's 
hand. At once its worth was magnified a hundred 
times. Had it been swept into a crevice of the rock, 
or carried down the beach, or wrapped by the rolling 



THE SEEKER. 23 

waters in the green moss, or covered with the slime 
out of which " the monsters of the deep are made," or 
buried beneath the surface, or disguised by the hue of 
some film, or hid in a bubble of wind-blown foam ! 
In many ways and foul places and strange winding- 
sheets on the ocean of life is purity lost, and the 
search for it as vain. But while we seek, we are 
sought for. Every earthly thing is figure. We ad- 
mire the experiments with light I Yet, if we stop with 
mirrors and crystals, if no emblem come of " the 
light that never was on land or sea," no hint of a 
rectilinear life, no reflection of the beauty of which 
the sun-rays are pigments and every shadow the 
frame, and no thought of the " Eternal coeternal, 
beam," for what do the apparatus and manipulation 
of Newton or Tyndall serve? Ruskin says no pic- 
ture satisfies which does not let us out into the horizon ; 
and I imagine life with Greek senses and an earth 
rich as Egypt by the Nile would be desolate and 
melancholy without the fathomless sky. No ecstasy 
but in this endless reach. I sit on a log in the sand, 
and gaze at the smooth sea-line broken by the uneven 
rim of wooded hills with a transport which no feast or 
flattery, drive or journey, can impart. It is the touch 
of that Immensity which the metaphysician affirms it 
illogical to assume and impossible to apprehend. If 
light is but matter, it is nought. 

Obligation has but this unbounded basis ; and pure 
intellect without the moral sentiment loses its charm. 
If no law but utility, no sanction but expedienc} r . But 
the immeasurable is the sting of enterprise and makes 
sacrifice the only joy. For why talk of the sacredness 



24 * THE RISING FAITH. 

of human life, if the human creature be but a longer- 
lived fly ? The parricide has but diverted the course 
of a fluid, which Sequarcl restored to the decapitated 
dog and refused to bring back to the guillotined crim- 
inal. There are three wa}^s of dying : bj r nature, mur- 
der, and suicide. But man}" cases, put under the first 
head, belong to the second and third. The Chinese 
executioner goes through the condemned chamber, 
each victim bending his neck as he passes to the swing- 
ing sword, till the floor is covered with the remains. 
O defrauder, fornicator, untrusty guardian, cruel parent, 
cross partner, unfilial child, the innocent, venerable and 
true-hearted fall at your not more generous because 
less sudden stroke. Yet still as ever, " one touch of 
nature makes the whole world kin," If sceptics point 
to abounding iniquity and insist on our hopeless case, 
the answer is Beaut}" ; no desolate shore, muddy creek, 
wild desert, terrible gorge or frowning cliff but shines 
and runs over with it to entrance the visitor's eye and 
tempt the artist's brush ; and when the vision fades at 
night, the strange piper, that made the chimney melo- 
dious scores of years ago, to the child sitting up in bed 
to listen, comes to whistle again. If we cannot see or 
hear, it is for want, of an e}~e for beauty or ear for mu- 
sic. Nature always beckons us with her spectacle, and 
like the summons of a trumpet is her sound. Why has 
God put into us this love of adventure but that we may 
advance ? A follower of Garibaldi confessed it was no 
political doctrine or love of his chief that made him 
covet wounds and face death, but the passion for an 
active life. 

Truth is the detective from which it is futile to hide. 



THE SEEKER. 25 

Wandering on the beach where the melancholy and 
accusing sea casts up proofs of disaster or crime, a 
broken oar, unshipped tiller, keel or keelson, spiked 
plank, torn sail or splintered spar, caboose from the 
deck or mattress cleansed by the salt waves of plague, 
ship-fever or small-pox, I found one day, an article 
more rare, a coarse bag strongly sewed at the top. I 
lifted it ; it was not heavy. I felt of it ; it seemed soft 
at the side. I shook it ; a metallic ring came out to 
my ear. I laid it clown on the sand, and surveyed it 
carefully, doubting if I would examine it any more. I 
fancied in it carpenters' tools or some singular treas- 
ure in peril of man or nature thrown or wrenched from 
some reluctant hand, and I lifted it again. I took my 
knife from my pocket, and with trembling nerves began 
to cut at the twine that bound it at the mouth ; but 
found it difficult to sunder the many twists and turn- 
ings of the painstaking, complicated knot. I pressed 
my ringers a little harder at the spot where it had 
clinked before ; they met firm, sharp corners, as of 
bricks. Then a fear came over me alone there in the 
blowing wind and rising tide, as the gust seemed like 
a ghost invisibly to figure the passions so gigantic and 
fitful of the human mind ; for I said, some living crea- 
ture has been fastened in, like victims solidly mortared 
into convent-walls, to be smothered in the deep which 
has refused its burden, and borne it weary leagues back 
toward the door whence it came. I shut my blade and 
dropped the weight, that dismally increased in my hold, 
again among the pebbles. Let who will, I asseverated, 
discover the secret ; here my investigation stops. Even 
curiosity is in suspense. Yet what swelling interest 



26 THE RISING FAITH. 

in the small package still ! The whole sky overhung 
it ; the whole ocean had vomited it on the land. 
Some one knows, God knows its meaning if I dread to 
know. I leave it in its mystery on the shore, will not 
carry it home. Shortly after searched for by my road- 
builders, it had disappeared unaccountably as it came. 
But I felt it reaching by unseen cords tougher than the 
needle had drawn through its web to what sail afar, to 
what secluded haunt or house on a distant coast, to 
what past act and future reckoning ? It was meant to 
go to the bottom ; but the world of waters rose retrib- 
utive to fling it on the strand. Had it sunk it would 
not have been from God's eye or man's answer. Noth- 
ing can be covered. The universe is glass. Whispers 
in the ear shall reverberate in galleries ; steps in clos- 
ets and chambers resound over continents. What you 
are you shall appear ; what you ck> } t ou will be judged 
by ; what you said you have not heard the last of. 
Absolve thee to thyself, wouldst thou have God absolve 
thee. 



II. 

THE SEEE. 

MAN is an animal, yet not beast, but covert angel, 
showing his difference from the simple creature 
in every act of his life. The brute sweats, the human 
being perspires, has even in a passive process some 
profundity, intelligence and will. Fish and fowl have 
eyes ; yet rather look than see. The}^ do not properly 
behold us, but observe enough to fear and flee. We 
are ghosts to them, but not they to us. They as well 
as we can gaze and stare, but not discern as we can 
without sight. The sage speaks with shut mouth 
more than fools with their loquacity ; and the seer 
notes with closed e}^e. The eagle and vulture are 
keen and far-sight eel, yet have not vision. What mat- 
ters whether the hutch, kennel, coop or stable be set in 
a hollow or on a hill ; the inhabitant shows no sign of 
being therefore better or worse off, cannot appreciate 
the picture, has no eye for beauty qr love of nature. 
But how we dispute as to the comparative advantages 
of our several city, rural, sea-side situations, and select 
with care and compass the site where to build ; be our 
taste for some picturesque nook, for land and water, a 
cosy frame to fetch distant views, as in a stereoscope 
(27) 



28 THE RISING FAITH. 

under our eye, or a hill-top that shall show flood and 
field, sunrise and sunset, the rising and retiring storm 
in every cloud and scud, and the immense horizon- 
line jagged with billows and woods. I have been treat- 
ing of that seeking which makes inquest of the uni- 
verse ; and of this the eye is organ and type. There is 
no such traveller. Save in sleep, it keeps perpetual 
watch. I have noticed when I sat still in my boat, 
gull and curlew would fly or light near me without 
terror, and not seem to know there was a man, though 
wild duck or pigeon are supposed able to recognize a 
gun. Yet it is motion, especially swiftness and noise, 
by which their alarm is excited or attention drawn. 
But how little, albeit silent, escapes the human e}-e, 
which discriminates forms that the animal confounds. 
How slowl}' the horse learns there is no danger in the 
train and no mischief brewing in the stir of the thicket 
at the road-side, or hostile intent in the rustle and sud- 
den darting of wings. The human eye is on an endless 
journej' ; yet how pleased at many an inn to stop ! 
Dwellers on the shore confess that b}^ an unbroken 
view of the open sea, however sublime and refreshing 
at first, they are after awhile wearied and oppressed. 
The incalculable laughter, as the Greek poet called it, 
of the waves, becomes a monotony and melancholy at 
last. The eye rests with delight on the island or coast- 
line, and in the everlasting circle of the main is like 
the dove over the deluge that found no rest for the sole 
of her foot. What an ark to it is every rock ! Every 
stable object gives to our sight the sort of comfort we 
have in sitting down when our feet are tired. Our eye 
lights on every sail that animates and diversifies the 



THE SEER. 29 

deep. Had the sea not been so bridged with boats, it 
would revolt us, and we should refuse to contemplate 
it, or only regard it as a hostile power, and, like John 
in Patmos, long for a world where there would be no 
more of it. But there go the ships, which humanize 
the waste and make it winsome, as caravans do the 
desert and emigrant- wagons the prairie. I suppose the 
oasis in Sahara has scarce more value to slake the 
thirst than to satisfy the eye saluted so long with noth- 
ing but the whirling sand, through whose ocean the 
camel is the ship. 

The seer is he who discovers and asks us to consider 
what is fixed and abiding on the restless ocean of life, 
the landmarks of the way, what features do not shift 
and stars do not set. What the spiritual reality- 
seeker has glimpses of the seer surveys ; and though 
the sight fail him, to have used it once is enough. If 
Canaan appear to Moses from Mount 2sebo, or the 
Pacific to the Spaniard "from a peak in Darien," or 
the Mediterranean to the traveller on Mont Blanc, or 
the Atlantic to one on Mount Washington, or the 
outlying American shore to Columbus or the Scan- 
dinavian sailor, it is in the range of sight, and when 
circumstances favor will appear again ; and one certain 
view of God and Heaven countervails weary years of 
ignorance and doubt. The astronomer is not so sure 
that the planet or comet whose orbit has been deter- 
mined will swim punctually back as the thinker is that 
his subjects will recur, beyond the compass of the brazen 
tube or too subtle for the crossing hairs on the trans- 
parent lens. The test of the seer is to take his init- 
iative not from other advice, or man's opinion, but 



30 THE RISING FAITH. 

original disclosure of fact. Milton makes his blindness 
the theme of his song because of what shines within ; 
and of all satisfaction sight is the prime requisite. It 
was what the boys lacked who loosened their boat and 
went over the cataract : and Ave say of the general who 
lost the battle, that he first lost his head. Some bad 
passion leaps on the engine and grasps the throttle- 
valve, but. seeing the situation, you will creep out and 
pitch it from its seat. The perception is what we want. 
TTe have bread enough and to spare. The corn and 
wheat are up. commerce with its forcing-pump lifts 
abundance to every poverty-stricken hill, and lightning 
makes contracts which steam fulfils to equalize condi- 
tions and upset every throne ; the only drawback and 
debenture is in our sin. How hide murder, robbery, 
and adultery in the trustees of our virtue, with our 
Fourth of July din and scream and cannonade, or toast- 
ing " our country right or wrong " ? A wail worse than 
from any accident in the discharge of the guns will 
arise and salute our ears after the reading of the old 
Declaration, and when the jubilant orator is done. Let 
us honor the seers who impart intelligence, not the 
flatterers who nurse our conceit. A nation, as for its 
fatherhood, leans on citizens of positive power, the plus 
in mathematics, who do not say Yes to our weak pro- 
posals, but put us to our trumps with their question, 
confound our insolence with their silence, and refute 
our errors with their speech, and are radicles of a new 
growth of better judgment and conduct. "We refer to 
the man of habitual elevation as to a chronometer that 
keeps sidereal time. He is a medium to whom the 
community is a circle, and never comes out of his trance, 



THE SEER. 31 

but is a revelation of perpetual salubrity and surprise. 
He shocks us, indeed ; but like the thunder-cloud, to 
cleanse. Give me a text, said a dull preacher to Father 
Taylor. It would be too hot for you to hold, answered 
the pastor of North Square. The reformer is personal, 
and calls names n© more than the truth does. Is that 
so cool, or a burning flame ? When a statesman had his 
feelings hurt b}* legislative censure, a reformer must 
take care of his feelings, answered our experienced 
Anti-Slavery Iron-clad, whose hull had been so bat- 
tered and never pierced. But do not whistle away a 
man's good name ? Let the man look out for his own 
good name ! If it go by his hypocrisy and hidden 
shame, what will all our pity and protection avail? 
Parents cannot shield children, or husbands wives, or 
parishioners their priest from ill-repute of misdeeds ; 
nor will any pleasing qualities cover up vice. If they 
could, it were our standard and example. Weep over 
the coffin of a man's virtue ; but pretend not a living 
bod}' lies on the bier ! The obligation of veracit}', 
though it touch sworn friends and darlings of your 
bosom, is a bond that cannot be torn. He is not a 
Christian, said a pious woman of one who had dealt 
sharpl}' with a truckling priest. But the censor was a 
sheriff, a magistrate that bore not the sword in vain. 
Doubt my logic ; but 3-011 must not gainsay my sight ! 
Galileo yields in words the point he reaffirms under 
his breath, and Cranmer burns off his base signature, 
hand and all. Moral perception is all. With the fool 
we can do nought, as Ave can neither keep nor cast 
aw a}- a bad statue of Webster, Everett or Mann. I 
would like, said an artist, to pull down with a rope 



32 THE RISING FAITH. 

some dark night those squirming trellises at front 
doors ; but there they stay. At all silliness, gods and 
men are defeated and confused. The showman could 
safer trust his little elephant or Asiatic tiger than his 
idiot out. But they that see must testify. Oh, dear 
friend, I can do anything but lie for 3^011 ! Who can 
look a once-discovered planet out of the sk} T ? No 
easier will it be to wipe out the footprints at Harper's 
Ferry or forget the words drowned with fife and drum 
or choked on the scaffold. The halter has become an 
emblem as w r ell as the cross ; and the seer and doer 
shall be in honor, whether Brown, the friend of the 
slave, or Bergh, the prophet of the beast. There is no 
escape from infamy and no accident in fame. This the 
soldier that insulted you, said Cristophe to the Amer- 
ican captain, — cutting off his .head at the w r ord. As 
certain however a less summary decree is after us all. 
It will be justified by the facts. All God's notes are 
payable at sight. Speak what is : "It is so," is the 
reply, as the mate answers the master with the quad- 
rant aboard ship, w T ord for word ; and once beholding 
convinces us we shall never cease to behold. Under 
some obscure disease of the brain the intellect goes out 
in my friend, and he leads an ajrimal life. But the 
sight is latent and potential, not extinct. The candle, 
dropped from its stick, shall be lifted and lighted 
again in a more lasting socket ; for, though we talk of 
end and death and eternal rest, everything moves : 
there is nothing but motion ; and motion is heat, and 
heat is light, and light is sight. What I do not see, or 
want to have seen, is seen with whatever smile at my 
preposterous hiding, or frown at my shallow denial. 



THE SEER. 33 

There are e}'es from which no bed or closet or chimney 
can conceal. Victim of detraction ? I will not believe 
slander was ever any man's ruin. God does not leave 
goodness and truth at the mercy of malice. That 
person has a right to throw stones — said a noble 
woman — because none ever hit him, and he . cannot 
throw them wrong. 

Let us educate and adjust the eye. The first idea 
is sacred that occurs as we leave God's hand and lift 
the curtain of his tent after sleep, and no evil passion 
has waked up or project been revived. Cherish the 
morning-vision in the morning glow, and look on the 
world when the sun begins to look. The}' who lie 
and slumber late while the dew of beauty is drunk up 
from wood and field, seem to live in a land " where it 
is always afternoon," and take a secondaiy and sleepy 
view, not catching sight of the whole. The front of the 
procession has passed by ! Genius is integrity of vision, 
seeing for myself, and seeing God in me, and having 
no Son of God see for me. I was pleased with the 
doctor who, first using the stethoscope to ascertain the 
disease, put it also to the ear of the most intimate 
friend of the patient to hear and know for himself the 
exact spot of trouble ; and, though we cannot compre- 
hend the creation in one glance, we have genuine dis- 
closure of part by part. How trivial, said an art-lover, 
when I get into the studio, seems all going on outside ! 
All the world existed for her brush. She was right : 
the universal glory can be put on a bit of oiled cloth ; 
and only he who thinks it can so be caught will hold 
the magic pencil in his hand. Be it painting or music, 
or the pen, this direct absorbing vision, instead of 
3 



34 THE RISING FAITH. 

imitation, makes the difference between talent and in- 
spiration, what we can and cannot measure. "They 
are apes," said one, of the negroes ; their boasted 
music is borrowed like their broadcloth costume. But 
the ape is white as well as black ; only the copyist of 
nature and divinity shows what came by no monkey- 
descent. But all the talent is nonsense unless it 
represent what is and exists without beginning or end. 
So individual is the human look, that a countenance 
once seen is never forgot. " Do your eyes," said one, 
"grow bluer, drops of sky, because 3^011 are anxious?" 
But aspects of truth are more enduring. They are 
glimmerings of the face of God, whose features change 
not, however seen, dimly or by turns ; and what is athe- 
ism but to deny there is any immanence or perform- 
ance to observe or record? The illusionists say there 
is no surety, that we see nothing as it is, and our ideas 
are moonshine. But is moonshine less solid than 
the bank it sleeps on, or sunbeam less firm than the 
earth, or lightning frailer than the lightning-rod, or a 
thought more fugitive than sense ? What is the world 
but a conductor ? Science finds force in elements that 
yard-sticks cannot span or scales weigh ; sjmibols of 
principles finer still ; for as the Pyrenees and Hiinma- 
leh peaks, Capes Horn and Good Hope, stay on map 
and globe for successive students and visitors, so these 
supernal things shift not. They are pictures on ex- 
hibition ; features of the universe : we go to them with 
less doubt than to Niagara or the White Hills ; for no 
flood wears away their basin and no storms crumble 
their structure into interval-dust. 

But there are conditions of this beholding : first, 



THE SEER. 35 

some original quality in the seer. He is not appointed 
like an army officer, nominated like a chief justice, or 
confirmed in any senate. If he be ambassador, it is 
with an inward despatch. Only historic projection 
makes the call to Moses seem to be on the mountain 
or in the air. His zeal was the burning-bush. No 
phosphoric blaze but the moral sentiment made his 
face so intolerable to the idolatrous Israelites that 
they required a veil ; and every countenance that re- 
bukes our wrong repeats their experience. What igno- 
rant orthodoxy preached to me that grace and salvation 
must come from without ourselves, as one picks a 
hucklebeny ? This is bad religion aggravated by poor 
philosophy. Jesus heard no summons in the sky be- 
fore he set foot on the earth, and never beheld God 
outside, at whatever remote point or gigantic elevation. 
His interior was the firmament that resounded and 
kindled beyond the sparkling vault ; love and con- 
science his stars ; sun and moon tapers in his hand. 
Were he better flung out as a meteor than unfolded as 
a flower, or more precious as a violation than an evo- 
lution of law? His root from a dry ground without 
form or comeliness, small and spindling to the carnal 
eye, was to set aside the big beauty of Goliath and 
Saul. All his flesh served for expression. Those 
who weigh and measure cannot do or bear most. 
David was more of a man than the Philistine of Gath. 
All heavy people can manage is to carry themselves. 
The u countess " of France was amazed that " weak 
and writhled shrimp," Talbot, should strike such 
terror to his enemies. The strongest person I have 
known had an insignificant look ; and no cursory 



3G THE RISING FAITH. 

glance would raise a suspicion what was in Bonaparte 
or Grant. Wonderful that so small a rod, as is my 
artist, can conduct so much lightning all the time ! A 
curious contradiction of our superstition of size and 
stature is in the slightness that often accompanies 
physical prowess ; and it was a superficial remark of 
Coleridge's friend, that beauty and genius are diseases 
of the consumptive and scrofulous order. We know 
not what health or grace is when we confound it with 
flesh or magnitude. The people who are called well 
and robust, crumble how often like the clay feet in 
Nebuchadnezzar's image ; but what terrible power for 
endurance and work lay in that thin frame of Napoleon, 
despised by the French girl he courted as " puss in 
boots ! " His slenderness was the hydrostatic paradox 
of a balanced Europe. The rose in the cheek is not so 
good a sign as the brown complexion which the soldier 
said gunpowder would not hurt. The soul may be, as 
Novalis said, an active poison ; the fire has to be put out 
to repair the machinery ; and in the flaming spirit love 
and prayer must sometimes cease and sink into the 
life of a vegetable or a clam that the burnt organs and 
strained nerves ma} T be restored ; nevertheless, a fine 
brain vitalizes the form and is a cause of longevity. 
Doubtless its vivacity and spring cure disease, else 
fatal in a feebler head. When one regretted that 
Channing's figure was so sensitive and frail, only on 
such conditions, answered Nichols, can a Channing be 
had. What but the spiritual force, we say he was 
worn out b}*, prolonged his daj^s? How vexed were 
Paul's critics at the stir of turning the world upside 
down from such a weak-voiced and mean-looking man ! 



THE SEER. 37 

Plenty of huge growth of primeval ferns, and in the 
forest still ; but how small a pot puts forth the splendid 
blossom of human power, which gets its angelic growth 
by other than outward expanse ! Nor is inferiority 
proved in woman b} r the physiological argument of 
less muscular vigor or cerebral weight. Womanhood, 
in some faculties below manhood, is above it in others ; 
and, if the reform of woman's rights is to prosper, it 
will be by grace of the intuitive among women, those 
who see, and not those that scold and call their oppo- 
nents hard names. They will not be blind to that 
difference in nature as eternal as its unity ; for it is the 
true womanly that is an everlasting lure. Not loud- 
voiced, but still leaders prevail in war ; Moltke with 
map and pencil, Grant without an oath. Our sisters 
are badly officered, if screamers are generals. Joan of 
Arc comes with her commission from the closet to the 
field. Educate, sa}~s a wise plrysician, the girl in a 
giiTs way, the boy in a boy's w T ay, for the musical in- 
terval of sex rises not from smiting the same chord. 
Let man and woman report what each sees best, and 
harmonize by acting both on their sight. But there is 
no sex in sight : prophet and prophetess are of one sort, 
a rare species ; and I heard one say the only hope for 
woman is where sex disappears. Not so keen the eagle 
eye, or the vulture's vision far ahead, as that of the lynx 
looking deep within. In the same appearance are 
spectacles how diverse ! In a railway train one sees 
the wondrous w r eight, so regular and swift, so that in 
my cupola I measure the time by its first morning 
passage rather than my Frodsham watch. One marks 
the glistening axles, the smoky column's lengthening 



38 THE RISING FAITH. 

and retreating arch, and bears the fierce snort of the 
iron horse answering to the engine-bell. Another gazes 
in upon the passengers' heads, busily weaving lines 
to cast from yonder city to the ends of the earth, 
revolving schemes that reach from Western granaries 
to Southern markets and European ports. A draft on 
London goes with that pull of the driving-wheel ; a 
Governor elect is also in the capacious pocket that 
pa}"s the fare ; a coffin lies among the trunks in the 
baggage-car ; fates and fortunes to fetch smiles and 
tears, a song or groan, are tossed about senseless in 
that leathern mail-bag, — and once more the paradox 
is repeated of that interior which includes the exterior 
view. John Brown is dead, is the refrain one party 
sang. John Broicn's body lies mouldering in the grave, 
but his soul is marching on, is the hymn of another ; 
but the first doggerel perishes and the second chant 
endures, because of a man who, amid plenty of anti- 
slavery zealots and abolition preachers and orators, 
singled himself out from all the millions for the heroic 
deed to stamp a saint's immortality.. 

The next condition of sight is a proper adjustment 
of the faculties. The dog has quick scent, the bird of 
prey far sight, the mole and beaver build and mine, at 
the expense of higher powers ; and men sometimes are 
able, adroit and successful through what is left out of 
their brain to belittle them. In Schiller's dividing of 
the world, the merchant, abbot and king are before- 
hand with the bard ; field and fruit, wine and ware- 
house, bridge and road, tithe and toll, are seized before 
he arrives for his share ; but the door is open for him 
to visit God. Why should the contemplator envy the 



THE SEER. 39 

sharper, keen to smell an advantage, or cunning to 
burrow out a refuge from responsibility, or s\y to evade 
a tax and escape a subscription ; and leave on his neigh- 
bor's shoulder the load, as I have seen a laborer take 
the long end of a lever in a barrow of stone ? Insight 
is worth more than profit ; but in order to it each power 
must keep its proportionate place. All the lenses are 
right in } T our spy-glass ; but pull the joints with care- 
less hand, heedless of the lines that measure exactly 
the brazen tubes, and land and sea are blank and blind 
to your -straining gaze. Focus must meet focus for the 
rays to stream so soft and noiseless into and out of, and 
fetch the picture of shores and ships from the dim hor- 
izon, where mingle the great circles of sea and sky ; 
and turn the hazy mirage into clear outline, as though 
the cliffs towered and woods grew green, and white 
sails gleamed or darkened on the dancing waves, and 
the fresh wind blew in the offing just outside } T our 
door. The soul is a spy-glass ; and distance is but 
a trick of nature, so that William Blake said, — 
" Height of the sky? I touch it with my stick!" So 
paradise is no separation. Active faith can bring all 
heaven before our eyes, and make it the region we are 
in, not one of those foreign parts, such as we call Rus- 
sia, China or Japan. Dr. Follen, in America, hearing 
of his father's decease in German}^, felt at once he had 
come nearer to him. Death was but the good ship he 
had taken passage in ! Not Spiritualism, but the sup- 
position of spiritless space is the superstition. The 
universe is no corse adorned with flowers for a funeral, 
and these immense spangles above shining nails of the 
hearse. The illusion is that conceit of percejjtion in 



40 THE RISING FAITH. 

which our senses hide more than they show, and hang 
before reality an impenetrable veil. To the keenest 
watcher with e}'es alone, nature is a harem that shows 
only curtains, windows, or unglazed walls. Kept out 
by these shutters of earthly understanding from the 
heavenly society, the glorious vault is, as Carlyle 
called it, an awful sight ; a dismal picture, if, beyond 
the plants and animals we put in a row, all is void and 
dead. What a ghastty thing the cold moon riding on 
her solitary track, the stars a procession at mournful 
obsequies, and the sun for the afflicted, as the coaches 
bear them away, a sad friend waiting official^ to see all 
done properly at the tomb, with none to molest the 
last sleep ! Want of vision parts seen from unseen, 
and admits the distinction of living and dead. But 
science verifies the suspicion that animation has no 
stop. The rock is a swarm. Resurrection quickens 
every atom. Observation shows in lower creatures 
hints and rudiments of our mental operations. Mj r 
horse suspends eating his savory meal to meditate ; 
when he has made out to his satisfaction the meaning 
of some noise or motion, he proceeds to chew his 
clover or oats. He licks my hand affectionately till 
something occurs to draw off his attention, whereupon 
he informs me he is thinking now, and I must wait for 
further demonstrations of his regard. To do away 
with or re-present what is absent is the office of genius. 
At the burial of a child, a clergyman, not knowing the 
previous demise of the father, united him with the 
widow in the prayer. Some thought it spoiled the ser- 
vice, as if it could not come within the dead man's 
range, with his sometime partner, by any influence 



THE SEER. 41 

longer to teach and train the offspring that remained ! 
But was not the minister unwittingty correct? Is not 
this the error, invariably committed, to fancy an 
impassable gulf which the vanished cannot pass ? How 
politely we call them spirits and angels ! But what are 
their wings for? On what errands and ministries, and 
how do they go? An engine does not have to climb 
over the hills, a balloon to roll on the ground, a steamer 
to go with the wind, a bird to touch a spray of the 
thicket in its flight ; the electric fluid chooses for its 
road the iron that blocks our mortal way ; and those 
as we say, departed, are not gone, only our eyes are 
holden. You were late for the procession, and missed 
the martial or civic sight. But the good company is 
no showman's troop passing b}^. Its pace is the per- 
petual motion. Beyond marvel or figure of magic we 
see them keep step, and our feet hasten after the 
chime, as we follow along the sea-beach whose sands 
make music to the passer's tread. 

Another condition of seeing is concentration. Bod- 
ily feeling is consummate in the e}'e. First it is touch 
in the skin. Rising, it becomes taste in the palate 
and tongue. A second refinement makes it smell in 
the nostrils. By a third, more delicate, it becomes 
hearing in the ears ; and one more ascent gives it the 
polish of sight in the eye. What a curious ladder in 
the frame, literal elevation of seat measuring the dig- 
nity of each successive sense ! So inward sight is the 
top of the mental scale. We say the eye is the intel- 
lectual organ, while sensibility is expressed in the 
mouth. But what sound from the tongue, or move- 
ment of lines in the lips, can convey the love, honor or 



42 THE RISING FAITH. 

worship that comes through a look? Take care of 
your e}^e if you would hide the secret of your affection ! 
No needle to the pole turns like it to the dear object. 
Never sa}^ how you feel to me ; I shall read it in your 
glance. Bonaparte schooled his looks, and could dis- 
charge them of expression ; and Louis Napoleon, his 
reputed nephew, confessed he attempted to do the 
same. A diplomat said he sat with his back to the 
light so that the workings of his mind could not be 
observed in his countenance. Everett's face was mar- 
ble, and Pierpont's an abstraction, till the hour of warm 
debate or eloquent delivery came. My sitter, said the 
portrait painter, wears a solemn appearance ; but I 
trot him up and down in talk, and the mask drops ; I 
find out in him the fox or lion I would paint. 

The qualit}' of pleasure is gross in touch, higher in 
taste, still loftier in smell, further exalted in sound, 
and culminates in vision. How fugitive and unremem- 
berable is carnal pleasure or pain ! But an odor will 
take you up and waft you on its wings, with shut e}^e- 
lids, back to your mother's garden, through hundreds 
of miles and scores of years. A drum and fife, a can- 
non on the common, will restore the muster-field in 
your native village. A piece of gingerbread held in 
my hand, and not eaten, has painted for me my }*outh, 
abolished the weaiy }~ears, made me small and inno- 
cent again, and raised old companions from their 
graves to celebrate with me the day of Independence 
in a dream. It is glorified as a transubstantiated 
wafer. The question whether music or painting be 
the nobler art may be settled by deciding which ap- 
peals to the more exalted sense. But there are three 



THE SEER. 43 

ways of seeing : with our eyes the mechanical shape ; 
through our eyes proportion and relation ; and without 
our eyes, as Abraham saw by faith, and Stephen 
beheld heaven open through the flying stones. With 
the naked eye, microscope or telescope, we are observ- 
ers ; but seers only when supernatural objects appear. 
In the annual tribute to dead soldiers, is it gravestones 
only we decorate and memorial-halls we dress ; or do 
we see those that never deserted the flag still rally to 
some noble cause, those on opposite sides here below 
forming in rank to march at one command ? 

From concentration, as rubbing sticks together be- 
gets a spark, comes interior heat and light. My pianist 
takes his seat ; I watch the musical tide set in on his 
mind, how intense in aim, one with his tune, indifferent 
to applause, forgetful of his audience and himself, yet 
perceptive of sympathy and annoj^ed by those that 
whisper or come late, and in his rapture take no share ! 
The fine drops gathering on his brow become a sweat 
of ecstasy and blissful agon} T , that falls and glistens 
on his garments, is flung by his motion into the long, 
soft hair, whose brown turns to gold in the streaming 
light, and is like the ointment that ran down Aaron's 
beard and clothes. He is ignorant of the hard breath- 
ing I hear from his dilating nostrils, as he gets more 
absorbed in his theme, and unconscious of the soft gut- 
turals from his throat that emphasize his strokes. His 
thumbs come down unawares instead of fingers on the 
keys he compels to } T ield what some tremendous pas- 
sage means. But into wiiat tender touches of forbear- 
ance and reserve goes all his strength, like meek 
plashes of rain after the thunderbolt ! He does not 



44 THE RISING FAITH. 

play on the piano, or gamble on its keys ; it is sucked 
to his hands, and is the jet of his soul. He weeps not, 
but burns ; kindles more than he melts, and strikes fire 
from the strings. Tears are how poor to flames, and 
reference to self is hinted in their flow ; for their 
affection soon runs into affectation, and in heaven, if 
not withheld, they are never shed. But the blaze of 
genius combines the light of reason with the ardor of 
love in its earnestness to consume weak pathos and 
leave sentimental luxury behind. So with my per- 
former it was transport alone, the bod}' dropping at 
last in collapse, as he glided, a spectre, from the room. 
Faithfulness is a condition of sight. Do, said Jesus, 
and you shall know. Experiment reacts to promote 
invention, be the application made in a mill, road, 
manufacture, medicine, any art, or the main one of a 
good life. So fidelity is called a single eye. What 
means this covenant of men henceforth to cease from 
backbiting, protect each other's good repute, and crush 
a common foe? Conscious innocence needs no such 
joining of hands. When did Christ purchase any- 
body's silence? The covenants were of Pilate with 
Herod, and of Judas with the chief priests ! Theolo- 
gians have hurt the moral sentiment in representing 
God as covenanting to do certain things, or anything, 
for particular persons as favorites, to which his own 
nature would not lead. The thought is mean and 
unspiritual, though the Bible stand sponsor for it in 
any part. Agreement to stand by each other is the 
resort of the feeble, aware that they need support ; and 
a promise not to blab the precarious reliance of adul- 
terers and thieves. Purity or safety is alone in the 



THE SEER. 45 

single eye. The sort of eye tells the sort of soul, be 
it that evil eye, which is no superstition of wizard or 
witch, that cursed and killed, or the good eye, which 
gives the blessing of longevity wdierever it may light ; 
and we know beforehand if its silence be a benediction 
or bane, another's life-insurance or wreck. We say a 
sister's confidence w T as abused. The seduction was 
also her fault. She knew your intent as soon as you ! 
Not forsaken is a woman, but in her own discernment 
armed of God. She beholds some things like him ! 
Death rides on the blast of pestilence and war, and 
worse corruption drives the pale horse of passion with 
your eye-balls for wheels, impure deeds in the vehicle, 
and bloody hands on the reins. Expel sin from the 
body, you expel it from the soul. What tender trust- 
worthiness and truth in some people's eyes ! The most 
shrinking are, with them, in desert or dark, more fear- 
less than in any lighted hall, or on any highway or 
ship. 

But is vision the last sense ; or are we dimly aware 
of a sixth in the strange feeling we have of others' 
purpose without any definable sign ? We divine their 
qualities ; and the w T hole organism of some persons is 
a divining-rod. Turn the witch-hazel to w r here water 
is or not, there is a witchery of knowledge surprising 
its possessor and its object alike. There are mediums 
that need no circles or twilight, and we in vain attempt 
anything behind their back. " He knew their thoughts." 
How am I aware when }x>ur assent is not heart}', though 
warm ? What moves you to decline an invitation as 
pretended, in terms however earnest and clear ? There 
is a property no chemistry can analyze, which trans- 



46 ' THE RISING FAITH. 

lates the fable of Argus, and makes us give the name 
of eyes to the germs in a potato and spots on a pea- 
cock. The Highlander, in Scott's stoiy of second 
sight, beholds one stabbing his dearest friend long 
before the fatal time. As the naturalist tells us the 
fish in the Mammoth Cave has not lost, but as yet 
failed of the ocular unfolding signified in its structure, 
we anticipate perception we but partially realize or see 
exemplified in a few persons. Be it an interpretation 
of natural language too rapid to trace, or a direct 
piercing to the springs of thought, no prediction of the 
weather is so sure as its augury of foul or fair in per- 
sonal conduct or the social sky. 

Hope is the prophet in every heart, without which it 
would despair and die. The good time coming, the 
coming man, the Messiah, is no Jewish or American 
notion, but a projection from the human heart, like 
Mercator's of the land and sea ; and by no fancy of 
his own, but a law of nature, Dr. Channing traced in 
his Newport garden predictions of a better human lot. 
Auspices were once found in birds under the priestly 
knife; but my auspicators are those birds on the wing, 
in their song more trusty than Jeremiah's burden, 
because it is unmixed with any mood of human will. I 
hear announced from their morning horoscope more 
than astrologer ever saw. Doubtless they but inter- 
pret a foresight in the soul, such as persuaded the 
sublime heathen, Ram Dass, there was fire in his belly 
to burn up the sins of the world. Pit}' such expecta- 
tion as delusion? The scientist, rather than the mys- 
tic, is deceived. The immortal sea, " our souls have 
sight of," shifts not its bed. The mountains David 



THE SEER. 47 

spoke of, that " give peace," lower not their crests, 
though Chimborazo bow. The axis of the earth is an 
imaginary line ; but what other point is so strong ? 
" He hangeth the earth upon nothing ; " but on what 
but him that hangs it, is it hung? You say you think 
it turns, said the child to the astronomer ; does it turn 
on }T>ur thought ? Wisdom is in the ideal, which is a 
presence and peace to the rudest man. A delver in 
the ground cares not for the stars ; yet how he would 
miss them were they taken away ! Is there any fool 
or knave that would not be further reduced if deprived 
of the ideas of beauty and right ? The door of sense 
is as wide for brute or idiot as for sage or saint. A 
wind-shaken reed, soft raiment or a shaggy prophet is 
what one or another sees in the wilderness ; as in 
;i Hamlet," the same cloud looked like a weasel or a 
whale. The plant, which the companion of his walk 
noticed not, magnetized Thoreau. Henry Clay told 
the Cambridge students, forty -years ago, he saw, on 
the Kentucky side of the river, chaos complete ; on the 
Ohio side, a new creation ; but what were the finest 
clerical spectacles reading but the curse of Canaan 
between the sacred lids ? It is a jest to put a field- 
glass to a monke} T, s eye. What to him are hill-slopes, 
braided streams, " leopard-colored rills," or laden ships 
nearing port ? Scarce more than to the lens he looks 
through. 

That the eye is a power appears from the diverse 
ways it is trained in the man in the observatory, rail- 
way conductor, police-detective, drill sergeant, land- 
scape or portrait painter, musical leader or Indian on 
the trail ; and the physiologist shows how it depends 



48 THE RISING FAITH. 

on the hand and all the faculties of the frame. But, 
though it have no immediate power, it is vision at last. 
So a metaphysician analyzes mental sight as the indi- 
rect result of much measuring for many an age ; but 
the intuition is not disproved. 

But the seer must note means as well as ends. 
Lincoln, with his far-away look, not heedless of what 
was near by, was more a seer than Fremont, buzzing 
like a fly on a pane of glass to get through. The 
prophet has prudence for the armature of his e}'e, 
and does not rush like a locomotive, with a rock 
on the track. From the working he forecasts the 
issue, as a cannoneer the spot where the projectile 
will fall. In his bas-relief of the two horses abreast, 
Greenough puts heaven into every braced nerve and 
bright look of the one ascending ; and in the helpless 
plunge and despairing nostrils of the other, suggests 
what he need not chisel of the pit. What an astonish- 
ment is sight ! The maiden shrinks and withdraws 
her hand. There is no discourtesy, that I can discover 
or suspect, in the man that salutes her. What does 
this incarnate sensitive plant discern and shun? Why 
drop }T>ur lids, having, in some subtile expression of 
the face that confronts 3'ou, seen enough ? Thanks 
for the tender sheath to protect the e}-e from some- 
thing that troubles it more than dust ! In " Ivanhoe," 
Eebecca can but look at intervals on the strife before 
the castle walls. Permit nothing in 3'ourself in the 
presumption it is not seen ! The mirror on the win- 
dow-sill amuses those sitting in the chamber with 
reflections from the street ; and we are all beheld as in 
a glass. Do 3'ou deny a charge, brand rumors and 



THE SEER. 49 

stories as false ? There are eyes you take no account 
of! 

The seer is revolutionizer and reformer. Some eyes 
cannot bear a curtain awry, or uneven rug. Said my 
friend, the wall is not straight. By my line, answered 
the carpenter, it is plumb. But, rejoined the friend, 
did not the eye make the plumb-line ? How many a 
plumb-line in government and theology has to be cor- 
rected ! Goethe, in his " Faust," plays with various 
expressions, such as Word, Power, Deed, to signify the 
commencement of creation. Shall we not say Light, 
and love as the light of heat ? A bright thought, said 
Charming, began the whole. Love and Wisdom, says 
Swedenborg ; and wisdom is a loving spirit, more finely 
declares the old Hebrew proverb. All is in the eye, 
Bacon's dry light, which is never co\d. So let culture 
of the eye be our aim ! The meaning of God is Bril- 
liant, the creator, as the sun is sub-creator of the 
world ; and a late writer challenges Christendom to 
show cause why we should not still, like the Persians, 
worship that visible orb in the sky. Materialism is 
having now its day and its run. But the Spirit will 
react. The materialist is not just even to matter, for 
he can give no account of it ; and the spiritualist 
makes more of it than he that makes it all. For the 
human creature cannot rid itself of inborn wonder and 
worship, which on the finite cannot be fixed. We are 
finding, about the sun, what Persian or Parsee never 
knew : its size, distance, motion, fiery and metallic 
make, and toss it aside from our adoration, as the boy 
does his parti-colored ball as the seams gape and the 
tints fade ; and every conception of divinity must be 
4 



50 THE RISING FAITH. 

overlooked, like a printer's revise. I see that deform- 
ity or beauty in my ground depends on a certain dis- 
position of earth and rock, and wood and road ; and 
my men and oxen go to work. So over the breaking 
up of old, rough forms and ragged creeds, dawns the 
new faith. The ecclesiastic trinity is disintegrated 
past recall ; the magic exposed of washing the world 
with a few gills of blood, when it takes the vital cur- 
rent in all men and atoning power of God, the beams 
of his face to bleach our blackness, his strength to 
straighten the crooked stick and braid the refuse 
strand, his grace to convert iniquity, and his blessing 
to extract sorrow from joy ; and there is no burning- 
throne to consume sinners, only sin. So the shadow 
falling into the house from a great affliction becomes 
more precious than any ray of earthly fame ; and there 
is no gloom from a gravestone which the shining of 
angelic countenances does not chase away. I have 
noticed that the time of my disappointment, rebuff, 
self-reproach is my fruitful season, as the treachery of 
David's acquaintance wrung melody from his harp. 

On my own seeing I must rely. Why should Jesus 
or Paul see for me? I must look, as I eat, for myself. 
If I am blind, or see men as trees walking, let some 
Doctor of Divinity couch my eyes ; then let me use 
them ! With another's coming out to lock the door, 
and tell me what is inside, I am not content. Peter's 
ke} T s are rusty and will no longer fit the wards. Books, 
called sacred or profane, shall help me when I am 
weary ; but in my lucid intervals I put them all aside, 
and find m} r illuminated missal without gilding, or bind- 
ing, or print. Why should a volume, however rich and 



THE SEER. 51 

ready, rob my patrimony ? I will read Tennyson or 
Browning while they clear and compose, not when they 
disguise my conviction, and darken or disturb my state. 
Sometimes Isaiah is not worth a farthing, I have such 
inward wealth ; and, if a thought come over me, I lay 
Dante or Shakspeare down. For frankly, I prefer my 
own inspiration to Job's or John's. Those curious 
lamps dug up at Pompeii, no doubt once shed a soft 
lustre through the festal chambers that were turned to 
sudden graves ; but the flame went out, the oil failed ; 
and I leave them as ornaments on my mantel, and fill 
other vessels or light modern jets. So the candle of 
the Lord in my own, and no prophet's breast, is my 
guide through dismal passages and midnight hours. 
Is this dangerous trust ? Need I mistake mean impulse 
for the spirit? My stomach inclines to some tempting 
morsel, but its conscience protests ; and there is a dis- 
criminator in the soul. I am grateful to evangelist ; 
but he is relieved and superseded when the order comes 
within. Then parable of lost sheep or prodigal son is 
but like a gold dollar to him who has struck the virgin 
mine ; and the ointment in the alabaster box as a drop 
to the Penns3^1vania wells. What service is the Lord's 
Prayer when I know what I want? Nothing satisfies 
but the immense and unexpressed. No man's words 
do justice to my mind ; once spoken, I tie not myself 
to my own ; but wear eternal inconsistency with my 
past graven on my shield. All the water-marks on crag 
and beach are sunk and the lines of sea-weed swept by 
the coast-tide ; and by divine influx every custom is 
submerged. Meteorology teaches that one hot or wet 
day generates another and that a third ; and if it goes 



52 THE RISING FAITH. 

to the ninth, the tenth, like its predecessors, is almost 
sure to come ; so, last season it rains, and this it shines 
almost all summer long. What a parody and satire on 
human habit ! A man loses half his worth, said the 
ancient, when he becomes a slave ; and the slave-owner 
loses more. But the worst slavery is to one's self, bon- 
dage to former speech or act. Some fine ladies can 
abide us only as worshippers. Bend not the knee even 
tfo yourself! Only fresh vision is emancipation from 
the coil we wind, a new turn and twist every } T ear. 
Whatever we do, let us see clearer and further day by 
day. See you again, is the beautiful French and Ger- 
man parting salutation. Jesus greeted his disciples 
so. See you ever, was my leave-taking, and never part. 
Not patients in any blind asylum of a world, but seers 
of God and each other shall we not all be at last ? 



Ill 

THE SECEET POWER. 

FREE speech has limits other than those of human 
law. We may be true in not telling, and false in 
having told what we thought. Ole Bull, with an 
artist's knowledge of his sensitive class, said we must 
see and not speak ; and the voluble people, who pro- 
fess so loudly their virtue of being plain and blunt, 
might -learn from the taciturnity of nature and God. 
Our phrase, the secret of power, is dictated by our expe- 
rience and instinct how, from a certain concealment 
and darkness, all achievement comes forth, as a seed 
cannot show what is in it till it is buried in the ground. 
Goethe nursed his literary conceptions out of sight ; 
and a great preacher said he never told his text but 
the devil stole it. The Jesuits' doctrine of reserve, 
however falsely held, had a color in the counsel of 
Jesus not to cast pearls before swine ; and when Ham- 
let complains of being " too much in the sun," he hints 
what a wholesome emblem of privacy night is for the 
mind. The conscious salutariness of retirement made 
Fenelon say, I desire to be unknown; and John Howard 
wanted no monument. In proportion as we deal with 
reality we heed not the shadow of reputation, and are 
(53) 



54 THE RISING FAITH. 

deaf to the trumpet of fame ; and to be blazed with 
fashion, a woman of society, a man of the world, a 
thorough-paced politician, or, as a Fayal Romanist, 
who saw through his own canonicals, said he was, a 
priest by trade, comes of that publicity where springs 
no fount of inspiration and falls no dew of grace. In 
the very search for pleasure and a fine figure on the 
earth the charm of life has gone. We have pulled the 
world to pieces as a child does its toy ; there is no more 
attraction ; the cup that was foam is dregs. Therefore 
a great affliction, driving us from the surface, is not 
only always a blessing, as the minister declares, but 
becomes a delight. When I condoled with Amos Law- 
rence on the death of a dear daughter, he remarked 
that such a bereavement added a great zest to life. 
Existence cannot lose its interest to one who has had 
and lost offspring, because such a passage forces re- 
flection, wakens the sense of mystery, which custom 
closes ; stirs inquiry, faces us with the great Power, 
reveals, however dimly, some angel of hope, and 
exercises in the closet or heart's recess faculties gen- 
uine and unostentatious, instead of those that flash and 
fade in the pressing and brilliant crowd ; and when, 
perhaps, some changeling of a human bird lights on 
the bough that has not ceased to tremble where the 
first flew off, how amazed with a J03' you almost feel a 
guilty denial of the claims of mourning, as the Former 
of our bodies and Father of our spirits ceases to be a 
phrase on the page ! 

The unspoken and unspeakable is more than all our 
talk. " Half his strength he put not forth ; " no 
effort is delightful or impressive that exhausts. Be- 



THE SECRET POWER. 55 

cause the eagle in his wildest soaring has reserved 
power we admire his flight. When the preacher labors, 
he fails ; and I cannot accept your sacrifice for me 
unless it be your happiness as much as mine. The mo- 
tion of goodness will have not the least flutter of 
fatigue or pain. There must be oil in the vessels with 
the lamps that are not to flicker and go out, but burn 
so freely that there seems felicity in the pure, aspiring 
flame. Therefore every reform or regeneration begins 
not with the selfish and cruel multitude, but with a few 
like-minded, blest in their common faith ; a little sym- 
pathy that becomes a contagion, till whole continents 
are the measures of meal it leavens. A way-side con- 
versation becomes the creed of ages ; only the hand- 
ful of disciples, not. the excited throng, hear the sermon 
which afterwards no tongue can do without ; a parable 
wraps the explosive principle that shall shatter imme- 
morial superstitions ; and millions at last kneel in the 
prayer which one supreme sufferer put up in the gar- 
den. Respect the lonely thought, the unshared aspira- 
tion ; laying hold on eternity, it will get published in 
time. 

But bring no bushel to hide your light ! Utter all 
your wisdom as Jesus did. Its superiority to common 
apprehension will, like an electric battery, guard itself 
from general touch or vulgar abuse ; and in these read- 
ing and editorial days the fear that sincerity will shock 
rises only from conceit. What with Strauss and Spen- 
cer, and Darwin and Mill, we have had so many theo- 
ries as to get be} T ond standing aghast. Untwist every 
joint of 3'our instrument ; let out the length of your 
lash ; open every door and window. Ventilation is 



56 THE RISING FAITH. 

the order of the day, and a draft is more dangerous 
than the breeze at each point of the compass, from 
which, as it stimulates or quiets every part of the frame, 
by turns, comes no fever or cold. A man pretending 
he has views it were premature to print, or practising 
on opinions he dare not submit to the test of con- 
science and law, is a hypocrite and sham. The time 
to give your thought to whoever can receive it is when 
God gives it to }~ou. Who are you that presume to pre- 
judge my capacity ? said Lemuel Shaw, listening to Dr. 
Griffin : do you expect at the last day to sit on the 
bench, or stand with us at the bar ? Let us trust that 
the swine, so mad to find the pearls, which were not 
wheat-grains, or so crazy at the sight of a lunatic, exist 
no longer in the shape of men. 

Beware of making of }'our unpublished notion the 
cloak of your sin ; for he who thinks as he would not 
have folks know, will presently act as he is ashamed 
they should be informed ! It is my relation, says a man 
of some private intrigue with another, and you have no 
business with it! If it is an unhandsome affair, if it 
breaks any law of God or man, if it violates any previous 
engagement or bond with a fellow-creature, man or 
woman, then you have no title, and shall have no 
power to keep it to yourself. God will give } T ou the 
sun and moon for presents, — all the beauty and riches 
of the earth, and glory of the sky ; but not a secret ! 
Your social offence society has a right to know, and the 
duty to punish. 

There is a sphere of privacy which strangers have 
no call to intermeddle with. Our deportment in affairs, 
that neither threaten nor promote the common order, it 



THE SECRET POWER. 57 

is pure impertinence for idle gossips to spy out. How 
much it is wholesome to keep apart in your own house 
or soul ! Thanks for the roof that covers the converse 
and dealings in which the family alone are concerned ; 
for the skull that protects with its opaque arch the 
workings of the brain, and for a breast without a win- 
dow for curious people to peer in ! Thanks for the 
walls of flesh and bone that keep in hosts of vile fan- 
cies and evil thoughts ! They are more useful than 
prisons of stone ; and, were they for a moment taken 
down, we should flee in greater terror than from a jail- 
delivery of all the criminals in the world. Only those 
intentions count in court which have been put into act, 
and in mercy many are restrained ; and Milton sa}^s 
evil comes into the mind of God or man without blame. 
But what menaces or makes for the general weal 
must not be shielded or withheld. Scholars and pub- 
lic speakers are sometimes dainty' about having their 
thoughts and words reported by the press ; and they 
forbid the pencils at the club or in the lecture-room to 
move. It is a nice solicitude, scarce worthy of a great 
soul. " I must be seen," said Caesar. I must take the 
responsibility of the convictions I express ; and I never 
will assert a property in them against whomever they 
can comfort or guide. Conceived in darkness, they are 
brought forth in the light ; let them run wherever their 
feet can cany them, or any scribe can convey ; and let 
me set at rest my apprehension about their misappre- 
ciation by putting them, as Michael Angelo told the 
young artist anxious about the light for his statue, in 
the public square. Be not troubled about the reporters' 
mistakes ; it is the gross meaning, the general drift of 



58 THE RISING FAITH. 

your oration or lecture that people take ; the particular 
errors, like trifles of punctuation, do not signify. If 
the note-taker intrude into your chamber, and print 
what the community have no stake in, to pamper 
trivial curiosity, let him be reproved and expelled. 
But the fault for the floating mass of hurtful scandal 
or useless fact belongs not wholly to him, but to am- 
bitious talkers and public characters, willing to be in- 
terviewed and tempted to circulate in a half-authorized 
way opinions and impressions of individuals, or about 
current matters, which they have some selfish reason to 
insinuate, but not the face to proclaim. By no practice 
is official position more abused, or senatorial honor so 
let down. But only by sheer vanity is aught of moral 
or political value reserved on the ground that it will be 
misunderstood. The market settles all values with sub- 
stantial accuracy at last ; and the worth of your idea 
will find a test and get the influence it merits through 
the judgment of the discerning, despite the prejudice or 
against the clamor of the mob. Nothing, says Goethe, 
is so hurtful as active ignorance ; so much of which 
there is, it becomes whoever has light to let it shine. 
What railway catastrophes, Boston burnings, and foun- 
clerings at sea it would spare ! Mr. Spencer shows 
how not an article or utensil we handle, from the phial 
we drop medicine out of to the bottle of sauce on the 
table and chair in the parlor, but has monstrous de- 
fects which a little inventiveness would cure ; and what 
miseries or gaps in human life for social science to heal 
and fill ! Impart the knowledge you have. I know not 
who will prize what I communicate ; only, if it have 
intrinsic estimate, and be precious to me, let me cast 



THE SECRET POWER. 59 

my bread on the waters ; it will be gathered, come to 
a reckoning, and teed starving souls in quarters of 
which I do not dream. Who suspects the acknowledg- 
ments to follow his courageous course or honest speech ? 
But the rule is to deal with principles more than with 
details. What a blunder to confound truth with fact ! 
Truth is violated often by communicating fact to the 
wrong person it belongs not to, and served by keeping 
the circumstance to 3-ourself. " The greater truth, the 
greater libel ; " yes, and the greater lie, if you mean 
by truth tattling of particulars whose divulging can do 
no good. The most exact whisperer is, perhaps, the 
greatest falsifier, — false alike to those he is trusted 
b} 7 or has the care of. " It is true as the book ! " Oh, 
traitor, who taught you that malice was truth? The 
verity divine is to look and overlook, to listen, and be 
deaf to rebuke ; to leave no trace of strife or anger 
in your face, and have no memory of harm, as the 
brook loses its wrinkles in the bay. "It is a fact." 
But nothing more deceptive, as stubborn than a fact ; 
and nothing more true than the mantle which Noah's 
children dropped ! Desdemona, taking on herself Othel- 
lo's deed, is not " the liar gone to burn in hell," but 
" the more angel she ; " for angels are not tale-bearers ; 
their wings resent such a load. But we have vindictives 
who are such sticklers for a bad record, and so hang 
to the shameful past, that they would complain of the 
scarlet that had become snow, and the crimson whiter 
than wool ; and, despite the divine pardon, insist on 
red as the right color by all means to be restored, and 
b} T some eternal mordant fixed in the sinner's soul. 
To hide my own iniquity, and play the impostor, is 



60 THE RISING FAITH. 

unlawful, taking into my own hands the mercy which is 
another's office to accord ; but the cruelty which rips 
up offences confessed and atoned for, is itself, of all 
vices, the worst. No matter if it was a fact ; it is no 
more ! A fact perpetuated by taunt, over-emphasized, 
taken out of its relations, pressed bej^ond its propor- 
tions, and all beside in the character or story tabled 
and ignored, is the basest of lies. 

Truth is no statement, but a spirit and living love, 
the nobility so rare in woman or man. How much it 
passes by, and will not stoop to ! How much it puts 
in its pocket and how little it pins to its sleeve ! 
" The past is secure ? " Be it securely interred ! Why 
remember what God does not? What are time and na- 
ture but his sextons to lay beneath the sod? Old modes 
of life, faun and flower before the flood, fishes that 
swam in Eastern seas, huge birds that left their tracks 
in muddy Western river-beds, worn-out customs and 
forms, kingdoms and tyrants, Ass} T ria and Tyre, Bab- 
ylon and Rome ; and shall we save from oblivion a few 
wretched outcomes of the facts that are so mean in 
our neighbor's existence or our own, w T hich ought never 
to have been, and soonest away are best? Resurrec- 
tion is good ; but burial has its glorj~ too ! We have 
to bury how much ! Bury the hatchet of strife, the 
personal quarrel and the family feud, old grudges of 
business and recollections of the civil war, the con- 
flicts threefold with the mother-land. Bury the cold 
corse and the dead affection too, tenderly but deep. 
Your foolish sympatlry and the antipathy more unwise 
have a funeral for, and drop the coffin-lid not only on 
the pallid face, but every sad register and association 



THE SECRET POWER. bl 

of pain. We put Indians on a Reservation ; in what 
limits shall we hem treachery, cunning, and revenge, 
those Modocs of the mind? In the Infinite life and 
love, out of obsequies of evil may rise forms of good ; 
but more than three days must they wait and linger in 
the sepulchre of silence and forgetfulness before they 
can be so changed. Sleep and death are heaven's 
twin-angels, not only for the bod}^, but the soul. What 
fury of passion they take out or transfigure ! As the 
dim distances and unseen hollows of the hills sift out 
the harshness of shouts and trumpet-blasts, to return 
them iii chiming music on the ear, what discords of tem- 
per shall mortal deceasing and lapse of time not harmon- 
ize ? The grave is God's laboratory, from which travel- 
lers must not return prematurely to roll the stone away. 
Untimely restorations of what is most dear and 
precious the soul resents. Spite of the complaints 
against God for grievous partings, the long absence 
and uncertain reunion, it owns the beneficent process 
when friends leave the tenement of the senses to lodge 
only deeper in itself, and be so glorified it would not 
have them back in clay, but waits content for what 
shall come through the last mystery.. Therefore the 
spiritualism that would introduce them in their new 
clothing at once is, to a lofty sentiment, vulgar, lacks 
dignity and charm. I should decline it if I thought it 
could be. I accept the divine order. 

Revelation must be balanced by secretiveness, a prin- 
ciple of equal worth, and not to be confounded with 
lrypocrisy which is keeping back for bad reasons what 
in us others have a right to know. The woman may 
propose, it is said, as well as the man ; yet what finer 



62 THE RISING FAITH. 

than the maiden's instinctive concealment of her love ? 
It is the truth of nature and no lie ! Perfect purity 
perhaps could not blush ; yet to be unblushing were no 
grace, so nice the play beneath the surface and above. 
True feeling hates show and numbers and noise. It 
seeks seclusion : the satan of society, never absent 
even when the sons of God assemble, drives it into the 
wilderness ; it builds upper chambers and the crypts 
of temples ; it has a cache deeper than savage or trav- 
eller make in their solitudes for its food and treasure 
which no robber or wild beast of passion can find, and 
it has perfect delight in the only One. I am never 
happy, said Rubinstein, save when I am alone with 
music, and music is alone with me. Has the spirit of 
one of the old prophets of harmony, of Beethoven in 
this new composer, come back ? 

The cause of such satisfaction is the undisclosed and 
unknown nature of all. Brown Sequard, perhaps the 
most eminent dissector of the material part of animal 
and man, affirms in the mind a secret power, superior 
to our ordinary understanding, to guide our course and 
solve our doubts. He says, questions have been sud- 
denly answered by it which he had argumentatively 
striven with in vain ; that it had stopped him in his 
discourse to his class with its suggestions on a quite 
different matter, so that they were surprised at his 
trance ; that it reads riddles in sleep, so that the 
Romish legend of the angels finishing the poor woman's 
task at the spindle, over which she had fallen asleep, 
has a cordial truth ; that it enabled a young woman, 
hi a sick patient, to stand on the thin head-board of her 
bed, and pray for twelve hours to the Virgin Mary, a 



THE SECRET POWER. 63 

position she could not have kept for a moment in her 
voluntary state ; and that it works many wonders, to 
which the so-called physical manifestations, old or 
new. are in comparison poor. It is interesting to have 
one doctrine come from the surgeon's table and desk 
of the priest, from the physiologist's knife and the 
prophet's month. Let me note some offices of this 
Secret Power. 

First, as it exceeds our wit, and as the doctor of med- 
icine agrees with the doctor of divinity that it passes 
understanding, it requires worship. Could science ex- 
plore and exhaust the world, classify all things and 
show what mechanical rule they are under, adoration 
would die in the light of knowledge, and intellect be 
king. Could we once see how this immense music- 
box is made, as the child does what causes his toy to 
jump or sing, we should, like him. throw down our 
plaything with contempt. Says Rubinstein, the men 
of science will find out all but one thing, and when 
they find out that, all will be ruined. Nought will be 
left to marvel at and be enchanted by. Penetrate to 
the pole or warm circumpolar sea or pierce the earth's 
hard or liquid core, and we shall belittle the planet 
whose magic we explode, leaving it behind for some 
new cosmic study. But by earth and sky. spite of 
Plato or Darwin, some secret will be held. Solomon, 
that royal rake, whines that all is vanity, and nothing 
new under the sun. But everything is new. Find 
out all but one? That one is everything ! There is but 
one thing manifold ; and the meaning of nothing has 
been told. Peter assures the Jewish sceptics that the 
monotony they fancied in the creation would be dis- 



64 THE RISING FAITH. 

turbed ; David enthrones the Lord above the floods ; 
and Jesus declares God is spirit, motion, and breath ; 
and while scientists teach the correlation of forces, 
they own a correlationship, or that the forces cor- 
related are all one that is without measure or bound. 
Baker may reach the source of the Blue or White Nile ; 
but no journey has brought us nearer the head of the 
sacred Nile of our being than people were five thousand 
years ago. We affirm all is under law ; yet the world 
is no routine. Was there ever before such a year as 
the past? Can any pro&a 6*7 fti'es project that to come? 
He is a great mechanic, one said of a pianist without 
feeling ; but the w r orld is full of expression. It is a 
tune with variations. It shifts incessantly, yet main- 
tains identity, and is a change-continuance, as Goethe 
said ; no two faces, leaves, flowers, spears of grass 
alike. Like as two peas in a pod ! But the peas are 
not alike, nor the pebbles, nor the twins 3-011 cannot 
tell apart. Every wave differs from its neighbor, and 
every wave-washed grain as well as every rounded 
star. Our science puts things in a row like pins, or 
describes their circle as we join hands and make a 
ring ; but to mock and balk our wisdom more is always 
out than inside the fence. The serpent's promise is 
broken about our being in knowledge as gods ; for 
Adam is as inquisitive as ever, and Eve is curious 
still. The tower of Babel did not reach heaven ; on us 
falls the old confusion of tongues ; how Spencer and 
Sterling, Agassiz and Darwin contend ! " Who can 
tell what shall be on the morrow?" The weather- 
prophet makes but a general hit ; some inconvenient 
gale or snow-storm contradicts him ; wet or drought a 



THE SECRET POWER. 61 

week or month ahead passes his ken ; his dial at the 
capitol registers signs and not the cause. Are matter 
and spirit one? If two, their joint who can detect? 
A certain regularity with continual novelty ; nothing 
in this world repeated but a liturgy ! The Infinite at 
every point fetches us to our knees. Folded in an air 
of marvel, swimming in a sea of mystery, walking 
through a land of enchantment, a wizard every step at 
our side, with all our glacial theories, experiments 
with mirrors and crystals, and speculations of Locke 
and Swedenborg, we fail to analyze the morning-light 
that unseals our vision, the brook let loose again to 
laugh in the meadow, the cloud's floating battery at 
play with the gravitation whose power to suspend a 
drop of vapor we cannot fathom, or this flashing brain 
that launches its thunderbolts of thought. I am glad 
of it ! It is matter of rejoicing, not regret. Surely we 
delight in the divine method in every line we trace ; 
but where the line begins or ends is forever unseen ; 
and the invisible, which not only is not but cannot be 
seen, is the element of homage. Fear not, O devotee ! 
pi^er will last in earth and heaven as long as nature 
and the soul ! I want to know and pray. The psalm- 
ist's lament, " I am a stranger on the earth," is my 
thanksgiving. I hope God will not reveal himself en- 
tire, only the borders of his power, and leave some 
background for my picture. Will the illumination of 
science scatter the shadow? It only makes it more 
wide, as the sun casts a grander shade than a candle. 
All hail to advancing science, for the sake of the won- 
der and worship whose breadth it insures ! The larger 
5 



66 THE RISING FAITH. 

and brighter the circle, the more vast and firm its 
edge. 

The Secret Power serves important practical ends. 
One is of Determination. How often we halt per- 
plexed ! Shall I go or stay, speak or be still, advise 
the man going to ruin, or " neither meddle nor make," 
lest the case become worse ? Nobody can tell me ; 
and no wise reflection or generalization decides. As I 
throw the reins on my horse's neck in the dark, and 
trust his instinct for the way, so I yield myself gently, 
without wish or bias, to the .power that directs. Its 
range of advice is greater than we suspect. We are 
not left to fumble round, and play a game of blind- 
man's buff, unless we let some creed-bandage be bound 
over our eyes. What calling shall we pursue? The 
finger of nature points. Said my musical friend : "I 
am irreconcilable with the Heavens for not telling me 
whether to compose or perform." " But," I answered,' 
" do you expect an angel, or visible God, or voice 
from the sky ? Your own brain swarming, and sting- 
ing you with ideas, your inspiration for the 4 Ocean 
Symplwyiy,' the will so potent you feel it withdrawing 
your hands from the instrument to the score, is your 
order ; and nothing audible could be more clear." Be 
but the humble servant that comes every day for orders 
to his master's door, and you will remain in no doubt. 
Act not from whim, or casting lots, or opening a Bible 
for texts, or expecting something to turn up, or 
the chance of the hour, more than does a sailor 
or soldier. The time and tide that wait for no 
man will come for all ; a wind will rise to bear the 
vessel it were vain to push, and none need be at the 



THE SECRET POWER. 67 

mercy of accident or their own will. It was a foolish 
woman that beckoned a suitor back because he took 
her refusal meekly. Never say yes, till you hear it 
within. Do you hear nothing ? You do not hearken! 
Have you prayed over it ? We exaggerate the impor- 
tance of prayer. We make so much noise in our 
churches that we have no chance for the reply. Why 
give the Lord such a heap of information, or shout to 
him afar to bow his heavens and come down, when his 
being is but the best in my own ? What is God but a 
noble shame at my own short-coming, the ideal my 
actual can never overtake ! He is w T hat I whisper to 
not with my lips. Persons together in a room in close 
sympathy often say, one to the other, " Did you 
speak?" when not a s}^llable has passed. God is that 
inward speech. The earth is his footstool, the clouds 
his chariot ; he flies upon the wings of the wind, and 
all the sparkling orbs are his outriders ; but himself is 
whatever right thought or good feeling gleams and 
throbs in the breast. There is a dawn I watch for 
more than for the morning, a stir in me stronger than 
the starry revolutions. The oracles are dumb ; the 
caves of sj'bils with weeds of centuries closed up and 
overgrown, and they are but figures in a picture now : 
the pagan tripods are broken and the Hebrew shekinah 
dim ; Urim and Thummim are a dead language, and 
ark and tabernacle laid away in the garret of men's 
minds ; Isaiah and Ezekiel are in their coffins, and a 
Saviour's second advent in the clouds has become 
hopeless as the dream of some lover's return. But for 
whoso seeks there is guidance yet. It will come not 
at the sound of phrases void of ecstasy or agony, or 



68 THE RISING FAITH. 

out of a book or memory. No paper pellets will burst 
open the celestial gates. How the Lord must despise 
what we call being happy in prayer ; a string of com- 
mon-places interlarded with Scripture quotations from 
a mellifluous mouth ! These old verses, instead of our 
own cries, remind me of the obsolete Spanish cannon 
I saw lying on the beach with the brand useless at Ten- 
erirfe, or of Quaker guns. The caw of the crow, chat- 
ter of the king-fisher, honk of the wild goose, are more 
genuine than these repetitions. I cannot distinguish 
their smooth running from the Romish beads, or the 
little bullet in a groove that serves for the pendulum of 
a clock. I knew a man whose prayers were so fine he 
had a cunning phonographer to put them down, that 
God and the public might both have the benefit. They 
were caught as they flew. and. like birds, clipped and 
caged. They could scarce soar to light in the divine 
presence, when so addressed to a human audience and 
fashioned for literary repute. I hardly wonder at the 
woman who says she never heard a petition in church 
that was not an offence ; and I doubt not it were the 
best prescription for loquacious leaders of devotion 
and all fluent piety to be forbidden vocal prayer. 
Nevertheless exists the' Secret Power ; and whoever it 
leads knows not if it approaches or is approached, 
speaks or is spoken with ; only that there is with it 
no perplexity, for its mind is made up, and its gift is 
obedience and peace. 

The Secret Power is a consoler. Why should grief 
mean parting at death, with so many greater afflictions 
in life? Living troubles, worse than death, we say, as 
if death were bad, this quiet bed where we shall toss 



THE SECRET TOWER. 69 

uneasy on our pillow no more ! When one's regard 
for you is deceased ; when yonr old friend's confidence 
dies and your supporter does not expire, but deserts ; 
when lively affection gives up the ghost, then death- 
beds cease to be melancholy and the cross loses its 
tragedy. There is. when love departs, no funeral. 
You do not have prayers, form a procession, toll the 
bell, hire carriages, put on black or call for the priest. 
TTho ever wanted any ceremony when his heart was 
wounded within? Xo presentment of human nature 
so sad as its craving the forms and flatteries and per- 
functory felicities in open meeting over the deceased. 
Yrhen notes were common in churches, what a wilder- 
ness of supplication the strange preacher was some- 
times lost in ! How he stumbled through, or what 
comfort was had from the conventional mention of the 
varieties of bereavement, of parents and children, 
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, did he ever 
learn ? 

^Ve make too much of providential troubles and too 
light of those we mutually inflict. VTe think it hard 
if our circle is broken once in many years by death. 
But who shall solace us for the unmasked hypocrisy 
and unfaithful companionship which is a common cir- 
cumstance of distress? In mortal sorrow people weep, 
lift decorous kerchiefs to their eyes, and are not 
ashamed of their streaming cheeks. But there are 
other hidden tears, forced back with bitten and bleed- 
ing lips. There are suppressed, unutterable groans, 
and no publicity of pain from the worst misunderstand- 
ings and violated oaths. The muse of history flies 
over them too high to take note. No autobiography 



70 THE RISING FAITH. 

lets them in. They slumber in secret drawers, in 
manuscripts perhaps shown after the lapse of a gen- 
eration, to draw confidential sympathy from some 
chosen friend. They wake ever}" morning to wound 
those that open their eyes. But the appeal is in order, 
to the Secret Power. It matters not that you are an 
unbeliever in prayer ; nature is too strong for you, and 
you cannot withhold that invocation more frequent and 
effectual than all the cathedral collects and chants. 
That Power which is our deeper self, can mend the 
break in severed hearts, though, as Coleridge says, 
they be like sundered cliffs. No wrong of the belied 
or unappreciated but it shall care. You tell me Jesus 
had no friends. Nay, who so many? He with his 
cross, Socrates with his hemlock, and Brown with his 
noose, not owned in their real worth? Rated rather 
enormously, every drop of blood millions beyond its 
intrinsic price ! Did Lincoln think all was gone as he 
sank in his swoon ; or that the assassin's bullet would 
kill slavery too ; and that England and France hearing 
the explosion in the little theatre in Washington would 
no longer dare to dream of stretching out over that 
sacrifice an arm of intervention, lest the} 1 - roused a fury 
from that intimate sentiment of the Secret Power to 
which no limits can be set ? 

The Secret Power commands. The scientific ob- 
server specifies its wondrous teaching, to suggest new 
ideas, surprising as miracles to those they reach, and 
to settle problems in mathematics or metaphysics in 
sleep or by the way, or to lead the soul in pitch dark 
of doubt as it does an animal at midnight over a star- 
less and moonless road. But of no less account is its 



THE SECRET POWER. 71 

dictation of sanctity and self-control. Men excuse 
themselves for sensual excess on the ground of hered- 
itary congenital disposition, an exuberant nature tend- 
ing to pleasures of the flesh. The Secret Power in 
them frowns at such defence, and bids them draw 
against temptation from its never-broken bank. We 
might scorn a constitution prone to ill but for this 
back-door to God. There are two roads to hell ; two 
appetites men ride on to ruin, one for strong drink, 
and one which makes no one stagger in the street. 
What is the policy, regulation, or prohibition for both? 
We are safe against either only in the covert of the 
Secret Power. A naturalist set before a newly-dropped 
kid three dishes, of wine, hone}', and milk. It looked 
at, smelt of and passed by the first and second, to drink 
eagerly of the third. An unsophisticated nature will 
spurn the mad wine of passion, the enervating honey 
of luxury, and take the sincere milk of truth ; and true 
charity is moved less to overlook violated purity than 
to insist on the bond. 

Our malady is profession and parade. In nature 
the power, however termed, gravitation or magnetism, 
is unseen. Orthodoxy is correct : 

" This world is all a fleeting show ; " 



And, as the showman comes with his train of teams 
and tents and spangled dresses for his performers, and 
strange beasts from the jungle and the sea, stays for 
a day, then folds his canvas and is gone, so, after 
this little entertainment we call life is over, the plat- 



72 THE RISING FAITH. 

form we sit on shall sink, and the starry covering be 
rolled together as a scroll. 

" We have our exits and our ectrances." 

But the Secret Power, and we somehow with it, shall 
survive. When Harry Vane, the martyr for freedom 
under Charles II., was drawn for execution to Tower 
Elill on a sled, he said, with a smile, — " I never felt 
better in my life." From roof and window and the 
crow r d below came cries, — " The Lord go with your 
dear soul ! The great God of heaven and earth appear 
in you and for you ! " He laid his head on the block 
like a child falling asleep. His last w T ords were, — 
" Father, glorif} T Thy servant in the sight of men that 
he may glorify Thee in the discharge of his duty to 
Thee and his country." A curious observer of execu- 
tions said his countenance did not change in the least ; 
and his head alone of all he had ever seen in the same 
circumstances, after being severed, lay perfectly still. 
What could so nerve and compose a human creature 
but the Secret Power ? Who can believe nothing rose 
out of that blood? In every age this immortality 
reappears. John Brown, on the way to his gallows, 
remarking on the beauty of the Virginia hills, is a pic- 
ture which there is an artist in every soul to draw. 
In the brooding spirit is peace, never in the crowd. 

" Wise Saadi dwells alone." 

Said a maiden : I am never so happy in any company 
as by myself. Only closeted with music, for the har- 



THE SECRET POWER. 73 

monist, all care departs. Doubtless it is because such 
solitude is the best society. In it the images of our 
beloved, heedless of the dead, live, flock to us, and we 
rejoice in the birth of thoughts to bless the world. 
Take not the musing man's shyness for pride ! It is 
but the shield of a process more precious than that of 
the watchful chemist or the sitting fowl. If }^ou deem 
him unsocial, you forget that the most secretive of all 
things is love. She, that never told that, need not 
have sat " like patience on a monument smiling at 
grief. ,, I find that love is satisfied without expression 
or return. If, against the theology of retaliation, I 
hold God's love independent of man's gratitude, it is 
because I know my own is so ; and I cannot fancy I am 
better than He ! Flowers bloom on the edge of Alpine 
snow — another climate may be so near — and kind- 
ness can blossom back to the curses that freeze. The 
difficulty with a certain woman of genius was that her 
mood was her tyrant, and she wished to nlake it yours. 
But unknown and unrequited is not unhappy love. 
The instant we put a fellow-creature outside our sym- 
pathy as an outcast and alien, though we quote Scrip- 
ture for it, we are devils' advocates, and have fallen 
from grace. Capital punishment is society's confes- 
sion that it cannot take care of its members. The 
diminishing of crime will arise less from dread of the 
gallows than from a S3^mpathetic recoil against guilt ; 
and I am not sure but the new doctrine, of brutes as our 
poor relations, makes of all meat-eaters cannibals, one 
remove from the Fejees. Love feeds on the beauty it 
cannot consume. We are made to grow by sacrifice, 
like deciduous trees that reclaim not what they drop ; 



74 THE RISING FAITH. 

and we can conceive the loss of flesh and all its ap- 
petites, limbs and organs, with our essence intact. 
Shakespeare in his sonnet deprecates mourning, 

"Lest the wise world look into your groan, 
And mock you with me after I am gone ; " 

with what a curious parallel in " Twelfth Night " ! 

" Not a flower, not a flower sweet 

On my black coffin let there be strown ; 
Not a friend, not a friend greet 

My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown ; 
A thousand, thousand sighs to save, 

Lay me, O, where 
Sad true-lover never find my grave, 
To weep there." 

It was writ of Moses, no man knoweth of his sep- 
ulchre ; and entire affection has in itself such satisfac- 
tion, it covets no stone or tear. 

So deep is that love which begets the world and 
works in ways oft so dark and dreadful, that some are 
bold still to dispute, if it be pure goodness. Yet it 
goes on, and speaks for its vindication no word, save 
in our experience of need of such discipline as our off- 
spring esteem unkind. To a fond and over-indulgent 
mother it was said, — I admit your praises of 3-our boy ; 
he is no pebble, but a rough diamond, which, to be pol- 
ished, must be cut and scratched. I will love him, she 
answered, and the rest of you can cut and scratch. But 
the love that stops short of correction, and only humors 
3 r our child and yourself, is not love. Love descends un- 
comprehended by its object, content to bide its time of 



THE SECRET POWER. 75 

being understood. Why do you care so much for 3-our 
calf? it cares not for you, said an impatient farmer to 
his cow, as the little one she mooed after staggered 
off to get out of her way. O sons and daughters, 
you will return our feeling to your own and to us 
only when the great mystery takes us from your sight ! 
Love is not trade. Barter cannot express or explain 
its original. Its Infinity is imaged, a sun in the dew- 
drop of our soul. " There is a rose," said one to her 
neighbor, " on your grounds that grows without thorns ; 
and lovers pick their tokens from its bush." "Per- 
haps," he replied, " my critical temper is- the thorn 
that was plucked off, and is now in me ! Yet the bush 
is planted, blooming for you in my heart." " It blooms 
there for all," she exclaimed. So, conceal what we 
may, love is never quite hid, but an open secret for 
all who love ; this is the paradox, that what is most 
sacred and private is best known. 



IT. 

SINCERITY. 

THERE is a moral in the changing notion of the 
devil in different ages and lands. He is a serpent 
creeping on his belly, a figure of sensuality ; a roaring 
lion, type of cruelty ; a fallen son of God roaming the 
earth for mischief, and permitted to suborn fire and 
sword against Job ; a rebel captain, in Milton's poem, 
waging open war against heaven ; a tempter, accuser, 
liar in the New Testament ; a polished gentleman in 
Goethe's " Faust," no longer — 

" Swindging the scaly horror of his folded tail," 

and showing no token of former violence save the relic 
of a higher sort of beast in the concealed cloven hoof ; 
not a wolf in sheep's clothing, not an angel of light, no 
blustering landowner, unfolding, as to Jesus, his pan- 
orama of kingdoms, but a human sharper and cheat. 
Dropping the metaphor of his now disavowed and dis- 
credited majesty, he is simply insincerity. If we per- 
sonify him again, he is a lawyer making the worse 
appear the better reason, a swindler in trade, quack 
doctor, a minister, saying one thing in his study and 
(76) 



SINCERITY. 77 

another in his desk. "Do you believe the Bible in- 
spired ?" such a one was asked. " As an Episcopal 
clergyman, yes ! But as a man, I think Solomon's 
Song an indecent composition." The reason for this 
altered view of Satan is the shifting motion of sin. 
Wickedness becomes wily. It effects its ends less by 
assault and batter}^, mob and riot, rending or threat ; 
more by circumventing and undermining. It is not an 
army, but a ring, — a railway management, a city gov- 
ernment, a sect or party succeeding by fraud and 
trick, — and 

" Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?" 

is a line no longer fit to the evil essence that comes in 
such various disguise. 

The snare is that insincerity in religion is often not 
conscious malignity, but desire to suit truth to the 
hearer's capacity. It quotes Christ's example of with- 
holding what his disciples could not bear, and forgets 
our difference from those rude publicans and fishermen. 
People can bear anything now. The air is so full of 
ideas they only pretend to be shocked when their inter- 
est or prejudice is shook. The Jesuit is no follower of 
Jesus. The Lord's pity does not excuse our treachery ; 
and when a man says he has thoughts it were premature 
to publish, he is unjust to the intelligence of the times. 
The photograph plate is prepared for his impressions, — 
the train waits for the locomotive. We stop without 
inspiration. We would die for the truth, but shall die 
a worse way the second death for want of it. 

But what constitutes or generates insincerity ? Ke- 



78 THE RISING FAITH. 

garding truth as external to the mind, a conventionality 
or papal infalibility, portable in propositions and forms ; 
like history, in Napoleon's definition, a fable agreed 
upon. Hence summaries and circulars of doctrine 
passed by a majority-vote. But concerted opinion is 
not truth, which words can only hint, and never express. 
If it be vision of God, in no Bible can it be writ, in no 
individual incarnate, in no church absolute, in no ritual 
expressed, with no earthly finality put in pound, but 
sings and flies to be adored. Decant the sea ; make 
with force-pump an exhausted receiver of the sky ; get 
the range, like a bullet, of a ray of light, how far Sirius 
or the sun can shoot ; you have not compassed its lines. 
Faith is the centre of gravity falling within. It is the 
poise which is peace. When it falls without, it is 
unbalance of vain ambition, and greed to be heard. 

So more than good-nature goes into sincerity. It is 
mental as well as moral ; conscience in the intellect as 
well as the heart. As every faculty has its own 
memory, and every lobe of the brain is a memorandum- 
book, so each power has that sense of right or wrong 
action which is its own conscience, — as the stomach 
with its delicate hints is said to be the conscience of 
the body. So, many men, who could never commit 
theft or adultery, have unconscientious minds. Ephraim 
Peabody said of Lyman Beecher, " He has good aims 
and feelings, but his intellect is totally depraved." 
From the muddle of amiability to all opinions called 
liberality, with its monstrous cant, no matter what a 
man thinks if he lives right, will never come the sincer- 
ity like honey squeezed from the comb, with no atom 
of wax to mar the sweetness or stain the hue. 



SINCERITY. 79 

So it is bard to be sincere. " Sincere milk of tbe 
word," says Peter, as though we could suck it like a 
babe. Says a young girl of her companions, " They 
might at least be sincere ; " as though it were an easy 
attainment ! I wonder at folks presuming to say they 
are sincere. I query sometimes if the tongue be a 
thing made to tell the truth with ; or if David were not 
right that nobody tells it. " Easy as lying ; " but 
into the article of sincerity goes infinite study, beside 
the impulse of the hour. Plenty of the kind-hearted ; 
where shall the candid be found? 

No bounty is put on this excellence, lest so it be 
spoiled. What a scarce visitor, and unwelcome 
stranger ! In Miss Edgeworth's novel called " Helen," 
one says, " I speak the truth bluntly." But remember, 
she is told, whoever makes the truth unpleasant, com- 
mits high treason against virtue. But who can make 
the truth pleasant to a knave? Certain substances, 
soft as oil to the sound skin, cauterize disease. Truth 
is a flame that burns the proud flesh. For the fine 
work in the crucible or at the forge there must be heat. 
How can a reformer be other than hot to an oppressor, 
rum-seller, woman wTonger, man that steals a railroad, 
or that wants to steal a church? Christ's predicted 
baptism wasjfire as well as air. Characterize a trickster, 
qualify a plotter, give any bold sinner the investiture 
of speech he deserves ; then look out for the brand 
on yourself as a violator of charity, hard on a fellow- 
creature, pursuing a deserter of what he had sworn to 
maintain in the ranks of religion or the state with a 
"storm of invective," when with the sorrow of a 
merciful surgeon 3-ou have been treating a tumor 



80 THE RISING FAITH. 

or a wound, or putting a plague-patient in quarantine. 
Every upright traveller conies to a cross. It is not 
made of wood. Were such an one so hard to hang on 
a little while ? Think you Christ's was of hewn timber ? 
Is the true cross cut of silver or diamond, gilt on the 
cathedral spire? Is it any one of those the bloody 
tree itself is supposed to have been shaped into, and 
all of which a seventy-four gun-ship would not afford 
material for ? No : into the fashion of it goes no 
hammer or saw, chisel or nail. Love is the upright 
beam and truth the transverse ! 

If sincerity be centrality, the mind's not losing its 
footing, according to Theodore Parker's seal-motto, 
being moved neither by the billow nor the blast, never 
had an}' article so many counterfeits. Blurting out 
the spite, which is disturbance within and around, some 
piece of male or female humanity may call being 
sincere. The general jail-delivery of every crude 
notion of a foul imagination, like "Vulcan's stithy," 
is not sincerity more than some people's atmosphere is 
odor of sanctit}\ Stout assertion of a borrowed opinion 
is not sincerity more than paste is gem, or imitation 
the real bronze, or the Bank of England notes, in the 
great Napoleon's counterfeit, were sterling. We have 
in Boston a class of persons over-cultivated with excess 
of book, conversation and society, pouring out affected 
convictions with loquacity as loud as the run from pun- 
cheons of adulterated wines. Their minds are palimp- 
sests where one writing obscures another, or like the 
canvas of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said, " There are 
seventeen pictures underneath this, some better and 
some worse." Rhetorical philanthropists are not sin- 



SINCERITY. 81 

cere who have taught their tongues to wag at the bid- 
ding of any hasty conception, uncharitable suspicion, 
or ill-assumed cause, like bravos that let their daggers. 
If you are at the mercy of ever} r strong mind that you 
meet, if you take as a mechanical color the view of the 
last treatise you peruse, you are not sincere. A temper- 
ance man is not sincere if, actuated by whatever motive 
of humanity, he affirm alcohol always poison before 
science certifies the fact. The clergyman is not sincere 
who holds forth authority he does not feel. One says 
all his instincts revolt from everlasting punishment, 
but Christ taught it and he must. I say to him, " You 
do not believe and cannot honestly teach what your 
inmost sense recoils from. What is faith but interior 
persuasion and assent?" The same person takes for 
granted the truth of every miraculous New Testament 
record. I say, " You cannot credit what } r ou cannot 
think and rationally represent in some form of intellec- 
tual harmony to yourself. You can only grasp it as a 
tenet, bind it on }^our superficial understanding, and 
preach it from no deeper than your throat with your 
will," To oppose one's public to his private character 
and course is insincere. A religious editor consigns 
Unitarian and Universalist heretics to hell-fire, and 
treats views of God and man his line cannot fathom 
with vile epithets and unmeasured volubility of scorn. 
When he meets the victims of his pen in the office or 
street, or in some benevolent association, he hails them 
with laugh and jest as his companions and peers. He 
does not believe they are going to hell more than he 
is ! He only makes believe. He is a diplomat, an 
operator in ecclesiastical stocks, as airy as Fisk on 
6 



82 THE RISING FAITH. 

Wall Street, a writer for some ecclesiastical Buncombe 
with his vulgarity letting clown the constituency he 
ought to lift, not a sincere gentleman, though he pass 
for a good fellow or become a bishop. " The lie that 
sinks in," says Bacon, " hurts a man ; " and this is 
inconsistency at the root. The worst deception is of 
candor wearing a mask. You have seen Herrmann, 
the prestigiator. How frank he comes on, expands 
his breast, strips up his sleeves, asks }^ou to feel in his 
pockets for any concealments, and then proceeds with 
his trick ! Jugglers enough cost us dear without 
admission fee ! 

But the theologian excuses his secretion of wisdom 
with the plea of good-will : " Cast not your pearls be- 
fore swine." He sets the exoteric clock different from 
the esoteric, like the time-pieces at the railway sta- 
tions to expedite the traveller with benevolent deceit ! 
I answer, " Offer not up sincerity to love. No love is 
genuine whose altar asks such sacrifice. The good 
nature you yield plain dealing to is hindrance, not 
furtherance : no road, but a swamp. Make your 
tongue hard as a turnpike or iron rail rather than, in 
Solomon's phrase, ' a deep ditch ' ! " 

This is unacceptable in house or shop ; makes sen- 
ates howl and tabernacles rage ; fetches insult from 
governments, as Russia is stung with a Catacazy dis- 
missal and England resents an Alabama demand for 
which she had thought an apology a legal tender: and 
it comes to a poor market in church. The priest is 
popular who, with mutual good or bad understanding, 
covers up questions and faults, in the record or ritual, 
brought home to his conscience by any intelligence 



SINCERITY. 83 

that qualifies him for his task. If duty prick him to 
veracity, what remonstrance from those who, like the 
family under the White Mountain slide, feel safe 
asleep ! Touch not the foundations though they be 
sand, quicksand, volcano-crust, or rubble-stone, as in 
the Pemberton Mills ! All may seem well in this 
policy, but it ripens^ to a catastrophe. A crash is 
coming in something more important than Erie or the 
New York municipality. Equal inspiration in scores 
of books, of many lands and ages, bound into one, the 
Christian's being about half the floating literature of 
the first two centuries ; the whole volume containing, 
with infinite truth and beauty, many errors of fact, as 
shown b} 7 Colenso, low ideas of God, unworthy senti- 
ments, not a few fables, much irrelevant matter, and 
not a little false logic or substitution of metaphor for 
truth, to pass muster under apostolic names ? No : 
such things have not the pass-word. They cannot be 
franked through in the great mail of time ! 

The disturber of the pew is charged with harping on 
his theme. But how David harped on his ! Have we 
any option? Euclid to choose his axioms, Colburn to 
make the multiplication-table and settle how much 
seven times nine shall make ; Paul, Isaiah, Jesus to 
decide on the topics which are Another's selection? 
The prophet's word is a message, burden, case in court, 
necessity which his delinquency makes a woe! His 
credentials and creed are worthless unless at first hand. 
The Divinity telegraphs to the obedient ear. What is 
ability but a trained spirited steed, a statue at the 
post, not pricking his ear or turning his eye at your 



84 THE RISING FAITH. 

irrelevant coming, till the owner mounts him, — then 
on his errand with lightning pace. 

But we must not be harsh ! " He never spoke ill of 
any one," — that is the crown of praise. We must 
treat all alike? I answer, " Love is not such a fool ! " 
It distinguishes things and people. Yet is not equal 
regard for all Christ's Collect in his figure of the rising 
sun and falling rain ? Yes ; but what a discriminator 
is the sun ; tropic to some, arctic to others, a resident 
at the equator and an absentee at the pole, scorching 
or temperate, shining or in a cloud ; in Spanish phrase 
a fertile sun in Teneriffe, but not to the Esquimaux ! 
So to God men are as far apart as the ecliptic belt 
from the freezing zone. One finds in the sun of right- 
eousness a genial warmth, another a consuming fire ! 
May not your atmosphere turn the benediction of the 
rain to sleet, or snow, or arrows sped by the east 
wind ? Sincerity may be an undelightful thing ! " The}' 
are fond of each other," — do they confide in each other ? 
Note the roof-tree explosions, like northward-travelling 
earthquakes or avalanches down the Jungfrau after a 
storm ! Alas for the passing of affection into aversion, 
the tragedy of the world, husband and wife despis- 
ing each other, mother and daughter at swords' points 
because sincerity reared no breakwater in season for 
beauty w T here ruin came ! Of such disaster no need. 
We know when distrust begins. At the outset it can 
be cured. Why is no report of slander a surprise? 
Because our backbiter, dumb and on his guard, keeping 
his secret, to our keen eye lets out in every expression 
all he thinks ! I want no one to tell me if he is my 
friend ! " Sincerely yours " is needless, though it ends 



SINCERITY. 85 

a letter well. Said a great financier, " I never in any 
investment made a mistake." Nor have I in such 
human stocks as I took shares in ! 

But people like not to be sincerely dealt with, as 
sick folk onty in despair say, " Tell me the worst." 
The Roman augurs smiled as they met, }^et carried on 
the farce. In how much of our religion scientific 
assay shows a shallow entertainment of operatic music, 
flowery decoration and ministerial acting, a huge 
growth with little pith, like some big stems of dried- 
up sugar-cane ! What but insincerity eats out the 
core of the commonwealth ! Do senators charge cor- 
ruption from pure regard for the honor of the land 
among the nations ; or resist investigation from their 
knowledge of official rectitude? Or do both parties 
have an eye to the chances of the presidential emi- 
nence ; and would a political doctor err in prescribing 
a homoeopathic close of sincerity on either hand? Does 
not the press require the same ? When I complained 
of an editor's exhibiting the belligerence he blamed, 
he said, "We expect better fashions of Christians. 9 ' 
Is there a set of people so-called, with a monopoly of 
the virtues, a patent for patience, under bonds to be 
good, and a privilege of sweet temper, whom the re- 
viewer, throwing his vitriol, may indict for violated 
vows ? Must only ministers forbear, and nuns be pure ? 
Then putting the names of God and Christ into the 
constitution will not mend matters ! We have no 
right : it were false to put them there, as if they ruled. 
Keep them out for shame, if not for justice to atheist, 
infidel, Mormon, Chinese and Jew. For universal equity 
let us go to the death, else we but utter " brave words," 



86 THE RISING FAITH. 

as says Fluellen in the play. According to Lord Bacon, 
men love some flattering fancy more than truth, as 
they do a colored stone — amethyst or ruby — better 
than a diamond. Roman emperors, with bread and 
circus, diverted their subjects' thoughts. The French 
have theatre and Louvre, building and boulevarde, 
wars for glory, and dancing in the Elysian fields ! 
When my friend expected a compliment from the 
Japanese coming out of the play at San Francisco, 
they took down the American pride with saying, " We 
see the same passions prevail in all countries." What 
but hollow customs, put for truth, did Jesus hit when 
he cried, " Let the dead bury their dead ; " for as, in 
the Bahama Islands, the coral reefs, sepulchres of 
insects, are dug into for the sepulchres of men, how we 
bury our belief in lifeless ceremonies of a preceding 
age ! A minister's changing the usual form of ben- 
ediction at the close of the service was once, to an aged 
sister, a mortal offence. 

Folk fear sincerity as destructive ; but it tears only 
to build what cannot be blown up or down. Denying 
for the sake of denial is satanic, not sincere. Let }xmr 
negative only define your affirmative ! To unsay, and 
not say, is naught. I care not for your refutations as 
for 3'our proofs. Explode the hoax, the sacred canard, 
though pulpit and priest's frock protect it ; but give us 
true tidings, — your news from heaven ! Go with 
others, far as you can take their line of motion or 
point of view. I sang the triune doxolog} r with trin- 
itarian friends, but explained that it was the tune, not 
the verse, I sang. The old United States bank owed a 
broker a large sum "in money or satisfactory secu- 



SINCERITY. 87 

rities." The president offered securities which the 
broker declined. The case was argued hotly and long. 
The broker held satisfactory to mean, not satisfactory 
in general, or to the president, or to signers and in- 
dorsers, or anybody in the wide world but himself, 
which interpretation the president's own lawyers sus- 
tained. The broker got his money : soon after, the 
bank and its securities exploded ; and on the timely , 
pay was reared an immense beneficent fortune, — the 
sincerity of an adjective the basis of all. 

We speak of sincere work. It means that no pov- 
erty of material, or weak joint, is covered up with a 
fair outside. Mechanics are said to do better work by 
the day than by contract, in which they slur, and make 
haste. Forty years ago, a Bowdoin professor lost a 
screw from the fine theodolite he thought handsomer 
than any woman in the town of Brunswick. The mis- 
sing little fastening was a great defect, much deplored ; 
but an ingenious student undertook to supply it by 
making another screw out of brass, obtaining from sul- 
phate of iron his own oxide to polish it. His success led 
him next to construct a perfect steam-engine, on a 
small scale ; and that education of the brain by the 
hand induced more mechanical and chemical study, on 
the strength of which, being a missionary in Constan- 
tinople during the Crimean war, he set up vast bakeries 
for the pressing need, turning out seven tons of bread 
a day, to save life and health for hundreds of thousands ; 
specimens of which, filling the air with their perfume, 
from the decks of several vessels, led a Mr. Robert to 
inquire for the baker, an introduction to whom occa- 
sioned the founding, for a blessing to the w T hole East, 



88 THE RISING FAITH. 

of Robert College, sending rays of liberty and religion 
through the Oriental dark, — all from the good heart 
that was put into the turning of a screw ! The sincere 
boy is now the sincere man, Cyrus Hamlin, Sincerity, 
by virtue of its quality, works like an element of nature. 
"When the glass was far below the freezing point, I 
watched the sun shining on a honey-combed bank of 
snow. Every few seconds it melted a particle so small 
I could see it only by its shadow like a ghost as it fell ; 
but at last the heap would go. 'What other ice we can 
shine away ! 

Without sincerity, no virtue. "We sa}^ of some 
pleasure-lover, he is frank, open-hearted, only his own 
enemy ; but drunkard or profligate is hypocrite, will 
hide his fault. We speak of a sincere hater ; but hate 
is an Indian, skulking behind a tree. In your foe's 
anonymous letter, you will read the old grudge ! Of- 
fend a newspaper, you will find it has a good memory, — 
rather a bad one ; and will hire some bravo of a critic 
to stab you in the dark. With the first swervings of 
regard into aversion, you are becoming a serpent, 
ready to join the great masquerade. 

Sincerity is feared as destructive ; but it binds more 
than it breaks. It communicates realit}- for the error 
it denies in " the sensual crew." It finds people rest- 
ing in matter, not in thought. Popular religion fights 
positive science. It is a family quarrel. They 
are blood-relations. Their grounds are the same 
outward assumptions. Positivists declare the senses 
and understanding to be the only sources of knowledge. 
But in what does Orthodox, or so-called Liberal religion 
repose but the letter, the sensible phenomenon, ordi- 



SINCERITY. 89 

nary or miraculous does not signify ; for it is the same 
outward foundation, and their reproaches remind us of 
creatures that growl or spit at each other because they 
are of the same species and in the same mood. . Per- 
haps it is part mimicry, or contagion of ill-temper ; 
as, when a certain Mussulman, in presence of a thous- 
and Armenians, spat on the ground, all of them spat ! 
But the sincere soul has not only understanding, but 
upperstanding. To it all the glories of nature are but 
stage-properties for the ideas represented in the uni- 
versal play ! To the pure physical scientist, material 
forms have no necessary existence. By the crumbling 
of the whole fabric, by the whirling back of the solar 
system into the sun whence it whirled out, he ought 
not to be amazed. But, though with the spiritualist 
earth and sky are but toy and tinsel to the unseen 
glory, yet as symbols of reality they have title to en- 
dure. Above the ground-floor is a staging, sky-light 
observatory, without which the many mansions in the 
Father's house were hid, but from which your report 
is beyond all veto of falsehood, affirmation of right. 

This perception commands action, as Paul's vision 
was obedience. It is principle at any cost. Said a 
now Orthodox clergyman to me, " But for immortality, 
the life to come, I would have my fling." Did the 
Master so teach, a peculiar fidelity to whom this official 
boasts ? When all was dark and no future shone, and 
only Gethsemane was watered to grow green with his 
blood}?- sweat, did he flinch? No, — if Gocl had for- 
saken him he had not forsaken God ! He had upper- 
standing when no strength to stand on his feet. Sin- 
cerity is no minus quantity. But what is the plus it 



90 THE RISING FAITH. 

asserts ? Peculiar divine presence in a particular per- 
son or prodig}^ ; or that conscious omnipresence which 
sheds special portents like a dead skin, to make a live 
wonder of the world? It declares no creed, but the 
Being words cannot contain. In " Herrmann and 
Dorothea " Goethe says, " Our wishes hide the object." 
Shall I say, our opinions hide the object? By our 
definitions deity is eclipsed ! The spider of our logic 
weaves a cobweb over the glass he would shine 
through. Anything between hinders vital contact and 
close communion. Direct baptismal fire was needed 
for the downy cheeks that mixed with bearded faces 
for freedom and native land, in such a sacrifice that we 
see the blood of our bo}^s whenever we look at the 
flag. We all pay toll on the road of life ! There is in 
architecture what is called the Finial, the pinnacle, 
gable, or nicely-touched projection from the roof. Sin- 
cerity is the true finial, never perfect in the young and 
quite happy, but the result of toil and pain. 

No sect is sincere ! Unitarianism, born as a protest, 
becomes a polic}-, declines as a witness for reason and 
free inquiry. Ambition of church-extension and per- 
sonal leadership hurts its simplicity and perverts its 
mission. A text of Scripture, miracle and ordinance, 
like a military cordon, with appointed guards push out 
dissenters. This police-process is harder with the 
young. But the old nonconformists, however held 
against excommunication by long-growing affection, 
are under the ban. From the organized power falls on 
us no smile. We are not asked to ordinations ; no 
divinity school professors invite our voice, or treasury 
of association or convention employs our pen. As was 



SINCERITY. 91 

said of General Jackson, " The sword and purse are 
in the same hands." Those in authority vote to publish 
only what is with the conclusions of the synod in a 
perfect square. There is ecclesiastic nepotism, be there 
presidential or not ! Candor and ability in other quar- 
ters suffer discount amounting to prohibition. The 
good men in the office of literary religion act as they 
think for the best. Are they wise ? The representation 
of minorities is asking political ; should it not have 
theological acceptance? Would a little radical spice 
hurt the flavor of the bread? Had Parker's u Ten 
Sermons " been adopted, would they have demolished 
the theological house ? Without disparaging the talent 
that gets into type, is no genius for thought or piety 
left out ? The words of Chunder Sen are circulated by 
our press because they will catch the eye, and there is 
no apostasy in a report. But how impolite and improper 
to let into the pulpit that Gentile gem of the Orient, 
which Jesus would at once have owned ! The wooden 
box is too sacred for him, but not the printed sheet ! 
Is the former dedicated and the latter not? Beware 
lest you make of what you call the Body, and Our 
Body, a close corporation, of short breath, subject to 
disease and death ! It is the peril of absolute power 
to oppress, and to breed in and in till it perish. Only 
in emergency of life and death is it just. When civil 
war suspended specie-payment, the government became 
universal debtor and creditor. It owed and owned 
everything ! Every token of its obligation to the cit- 
izen was token of the citizen's obligation to it, like 
that piece of furniture celebrated by the poet, — 



92 THE RISING FAITH. 

" Contrived a double debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day." 

All related to one point, the nation's claim. It was 
well and needful. " Suppose we invest in United 
States stocks and they fail?" a venerable man was 
asked. Clenching his fist in the inquirer's face, he 
said, " Then we shall all go to hell together." Shall 
we, with no exigency', imitate in the church this ab- 
normal condition of the State, unless we confess our 
destitution of sterling truth? A certain bank lost one- 
quarter of its capital by a loan to its involved pres- 
ident. Let not our directors reduce our capital of 
truth by spending on ventures of however venerable 
falsehood, and refusing notes of value as solid as they 
are new ! A few persons, not the quorum of a com- 
mittee, may decide. Is the Erie then the only Ring? 
Zealous propagandists gallop, like Sherman and Sher- 
idan, up and down the lines and talk of marching and 
banners ; then perhaps, like Lee and Johnstone, desert 
to the other side. Meanwhile, with all the bustle and 
parade, the standard of scholarship is lowered, — prec- 
ious metal of doctrine alloyed, — our appeals becom- 
ing popular become vulgar, the reason for a liberal 
order is belied ; and, amid increasing numbers and 
show of success, we are taunted with signs of decay. 
When shall we learn our mission is not to conquer — 
of which I trust we have heard the last — but to 
leaven and lift ? Competing with others in the denom- 
inational race, we lose our own centre of gravity, and 
with our poise, our peace, parting with the sincerity 
which is the basis of strength. 



SINCERITY. 93 

That sincerity we have disprized with our mirac- 
ulous test, belief in which we must cease to insist on 
as a criterion of soundness or qualification to teach. 
Extraordinary healings or apparitions break not any 
known law ! But how about a tree blasted with a 
curse, money coined within a fish's mouth, water turned 
into wine, a fish or loaf multiplied that never swam or 
grew as grain ? It were a lie of nature and of God ! 
As pictorial writing, legendary accretion, a sharp-cut 
statistical figure of supernature or spirit as supreme, it 
may pass ; but not as a matter of fact. My friend 
says, " In the pulpit I steer clear of such tales." But 
I read them with pleasure, in public or private, as 
myths , of which some radicals seem unable to conceive. 
They know no distinction between falsehood and fact. 
Even Theodore Parker satirized a beautiful idyl in the 
Old Testament as the " Lord's eating veal with Abra- 
ham," and was more concerned with the authenticity 
than the beauty of the story of Ruth. But I will not 
tear the leaf on which a fable is writ. Fiction is more 
truth than any exact story. Myth is an indispensable 
part of literature and life. It may express a senti- 
ment or idea deeper and firmer to build on than any 
earthly occurrence. Figures cannot lie, we say. In 
the wrong rows they are the greatest liars in the world, 
as every accountant and swindled trader learn. Facts 
are stubborn things, and very misleading. An astute 
lawyer, religious sectarian, partisan politician, external 
and circumstantial philanthropist, with a zeal not 
according to knowledge will so cull, state and distribute 
his facts as to make unjust and injurious impressions 
of every subject with which he deals. Whether we 



94 THE RISING FAITH. 

have all the facts, and in the right proportion, is the 
question which it takes conscience and reason, as well 
as the sharpest eye and most veracious tongue to 
decide. Governed by circumstances? Yes, if you 
will be governed by them all, rightly understood ! The 
deceptive nature of partial induction was hinted by 
Napoleon in his scoring of histor} T as a concerted fable. 
We want something beside histoiy ; we must have a 
principle, — and myth is symbolic resultant of the 
struggle of the human mind to represent, in the shape 
of some double meaning of an event, or significance of 
a natural object, that sense of the Infinite, of God and 
Heaven, which haunts it behind all the shows of sense, 
hovers over it in visions of dream, and transcends for 
it the vistas of time. Unlawful so to affront the under- 
standing and give fancy the reign? No, — rather pity 
to be of intellect so hard as to be poorly satisfied with 
the surface of things, and not feel their mystery buoy- 
ing them like a flood and folding as the air, unconscious 
of which an apprehension of the universe is but one 
line in advance of the brute. Nothing to do with met- 
aphor, only with plain matter of fact? The world is 
God's metaphor ; all its solidity his shadow, all its 
shining a ray of his latent heat ; and the sincerity by 
which you feel constrained to disown wonder in the 
creation, or the reports of it made by religious men, is 
by you mistakenly assumed and misnamed. It is no 
doubt a good, bare, bald, homely honesty of a prosaic 
mind ; but amounts not to that sincerity whose quality 
is to meet the Divine work and spirit in their whole 
amplitude and ever-quickening breath. This is all 
imagination, do you say ? Yes, all imagination it is ! 



SINCERITY. 95 

And what is imagination but the eye which sees heights 
and depths never revealed to physical science or the 
dogmatic brain? "Prose and Poetry from my Life," 
G oethe called his book. There was more reality- in the 
poetry than in the prose. It is this half-seized, elusive, 
incomprehensible, immortal reality that gives to the 
mythical element in sacred narrative its charm ; holds 
the old picture on the page ; makes an illuminated 
missal of the Bible, with its marvellous word-paintings, 
and keeps the spell in Paul Veronese's Canvas of the 
Marriage in Cana, and Correggio's "LaNotte," and 
Raphael's Transfiguration. Not that things, of course, 
sensibly happened just as the}' sketch or the biographer 
relates ; but, by means of what is supposition, if not 
even superstition, in such happenings, invisible glories 
stream through the chinks and crevices of this cloddy, 
stony world ; raise noble suspicions of destiny beyond 
the dust ; and make sceptical Sadducees of the market 
and the street stagger under the stress of divine possi- 
bilities, as earthquakes shift the proudest architecture 
of the city from its plumb line. Nothing against 
reason, but much above understanding and individual 
experience we must accept ; and surely shall, if we 
ever, as we hope, get up out of these old clothes of our 
bodies into glorified forms ; after all not so surprising 
as are the first garments with which the good Father 
fits us ! 

But contradictions, inconsistent with each other or 
our own nature, must be from our standard left out. 
A clergyman says all his feelings recoil, and his rea- 
son revolts from some article of his authoritative creed, 
which, nevertheless, he must hold and preach ! Hold 



96 THE RISING FAITH. 

and preach it he may ; but believe it he does not ! It 
is but held in his will-worship, not divine worship. 
Nothing is believed that has no intellectual harmony, 
but is by the stomach of the mind thrown off. The 
development of intelligence deprives error of its in- 
ward lodging. It cannot be accommodated longer. 
It is unthinkable, when we come to think. No eccle- 
siastical position but must shift and conform to the 
alteration of things, which Church of Rome or Greek 
Church cannot resist. Every new sect presumes it has 
reached the final station : will die, if need be, in the last 
ditch ! There is no last ditch ! You have seen the curious 
terraces left by successive subsidings, age after age, of 
some inland lake. Each generation assumed its level 
would last forever ; but it sank and sank. So the river 
sank out of the great lakes one by one, — and is sinking 
and wearing the rocks away, till Erie shall be emptied, 
and the Gulf of St. Lawrence added a new reservoir to the 
mighty chain. In the social alteration we have a part 
to act ; and that part is to let the moral sense not only 
into our heart and life, but our mind and speech. A 
minister asked me what he should do with language of 
worship in his liturgy which was resented by his feel- 
ing of reverence and truth. I told him he must not 
enact any untruth. He must explain himself frankly 
to the folk. There must be no mistrust about his men- 
tal position in regard to what he was vital part of. It 
is this claim of sincerity, in which ecclesiastical com- 
motion finds its cause, as Dr. Hayes tells us strange 
rumblings precede the splitting of icebergs from the 
glaciers in the Northern Sea. 

The line between the acceptable and impossible in 



SINCERITY. 97 

tales of wonder is yet to be drawn. In the Report on 
Spiritualism, by the London Dialetical Society, vari- 
ous fruits were brought as if created on the spot, as 
the wine flowed in Auerbach's cellar in the play of 
Faust. Tricksy jugglers, more expert than magicians 
in Egypt, seemed to be roving, with full swing ; for 
who can impute such doings to the Lord ? But against 
spectres there is no law ! Science cannot say or unsay 
aught about Macbeth's witches on the Scottish heath, 
or Hamlet's father at the Danish court ; nor whether 
Jesus walked on the water, or Mr. Home floats to the 
ceiling, as Madame Guyon in her ecstasies could scarce 
keep her feet on the floor. But no truth can be built 
on a portent. It were to build spirit on matter, as 
popular religion does. In the multiple of trivial mar- 
vels we shall have to petition for the natural laws ! 
Why are we so indifferent to the extraordinary ac- 
counts? What then? is our question to the unac- 
countable things. We can build on them no better 
ideas of God or heaven ; rather have our conceptions 
belittled and let down. Sceptics may be convinced, 
Sadducees silenced, but believers are not exalted. Spir- 
itualism and Materialism, like the angels on Jacob's 
ladder, pass each other ; the latter rising, the former 
coming down. The one refined, the other coarsened, 
which is the real Dromio when the} 7 meet ? Both dis- 
appear in thought. Materialism, like a Japanese offi- 
cial, commits Hari Kari, the Happy Despatch at the 
temple door. It is suicide, by its surrender to pure 
force in correlation, and a relationship unsearchable 
and unseen. If by spirit we mean that which is its 
own essence and proof, spirit is all there is ; the 
7 



98 THE RISING FAITH. 

elements are its servants, and matter the marshal of 
ceremonies to introduce it to itself in every diverse 
form. There would be no matter, save to keep us at a 
certain distance of arm's length from each other, that 
we may know as we are known, recognize God in his 
work, and not run all together in one confused mass 
and mere mighty deep. Nature cannot drive out its 
parent, the supernature. "All must come under the 
head of science," one of her spokesmen says. But 
what is science ? One of the words we play and con- 
jure with ! There are other words not to be dis- 
charged of their meaning, — sentiment, intuition, in- 
ward light and sight, voice and ear. Cassius says, Brutus 
is a name that is as fair, sounds as well, and weighs as 
heavy as Ccesar; and when naturalism flouts Christian 
faith and hope, we ask : " Upon what meat doth this 
our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?" "We own 
his discoveries ; let him be hospitable to our ideas. As 
diamond cuts diamond, let science and devotion meet ! 
An unanimated form, a recited liturgy, may show as 
little feeling as the Mohammedan repetition of Arabic 
prayers, and be a dead language as much as that, in 
which only some bodily posture gives the sense to 
every line. The Romish Transubstantiation is better 
than our Supper, if for that superstition only this- 
mechanism is put. A minister, finding, when the child 
was brought, no water in the bowl, y-et scooped his 
hand into it and baptized with air, playing a trick on 
the people's eyes. What signified a rite so insincere? 
Unitarianism being a past issue, and nobody minding 
how another may worship God, in the singular number 
or some threefold or manifold way, what shall the new 



SINCERITY. 99 

departure be but this question of sincerity, putting our 
basis icithout or within^ to which Radicalism points? 
How the hold weakens of external evidence on thought- 
ful men ! Why do we turn the volumes of prodigy with 
careless hand, and read with incurious eye ? Wherefore 
such surfeit of astonishment, apparitions so many vag- 
abonds, the bulky book of their revelations such a dry 
herbarium ? How comes it, the ghostly doings tempt 
so little appetite that Mr. Huxley declines attending to 
them ? Why do I take refuge in a volume of Shake- 
speare, and leave Owen's "Foot-falls" unnoticed, and 
his "Debatable Land" without any survey? Because 
by these mortal performances my immortal instinct is 
not fed ! Through this materialism of spirits the heav- 
enly glory oozes out, as lightning through conductors ; 
and is insulated, or made potent only in thought. Man- 
ifestations waste the substance. Mediums are leaky 
vessels. The celestial jars crack, the apocalyptic vials 
break in their hands. Expression is the ebb of feeling. 
Demonstrations run away with faith, if we had any at 
the start. Convince coarse doubters as they may by 
running glory into the ground, yet the eternal belief is 
sustained, not by sensuous communications, but by 
musing, by loving, by work and prayer. 

Sincerity is more than veracity, or the exact squar- 
ing of our statement with the fact. It is such presence 
of reality and truth in the mind, that whatever we do 
or say is a piece of nature, utterance of spirit and token 
of God. This genuineness some would sacrifice to 
generosity. A certain doctrine, social, theological, or 
political, is said to be doing good ; so we preach or tol- 
erate though we think it unsound. But it is unhallowed 



100 THE RISING FAITH. 

offering. It is a way like those where city authority 
warns us travel is unsafe. Many temperance reformers 
take the position that alcohol in every shape, light 
wine, lager beer, or the slight film in a little bottle of 
homoeopathic medicine, is a bane. They fancy, if the 
comrnuirtty can be so persuaded, sobriety will prevail ; 
whose cause indeed, with drunkenness the source of 
half our crime, is so important, any philanthropist 
would gladly be a fanatic for it on every honest ground. 
But what if I do not believe every drop of vinous fer- 
mentation is only pure venom ? What if the sentence 
of science and experience to my mind be on the other 
side, and I have the witness of the best men and 
doctors that some form of spirituous ministration is 
beneficent to heal ; as James Martineau, in England, 
eighteen years ago, when the Maine liquor-law so raged 
as to silence the Atlantic roar and be heard in Eng- 
land, expressing his astonishment at such a statute, 
told me he had been lifted from extreme perilous pros- 
tration by the use of wine ! Then I must act and speak 
on the best of my knowledge and faith, and not drop a 
pinch of my sincerity into the flame of the altar ded- 
icated to human good, to save a nation of inebriates, 
not convinced it were for real good more than in- 
cense of an old recanting Christian on the shrine of 
Jupiter. Let me say, Taste, touch, handle this dan- 
gerous thing for pleasure, I will not ! I would not eat 
meat to make my brother offend. But I will heed the 
duty of health, and walk as I would others should ; 
doing nothing for the sake of example — for nothing 
is well done so — but doing what is right, true, beau- 
tiful in every circumstance, so presenting an example, 



SINCERITY, 101 

if that be the want, which all Massachusetts, the United 
States, every nation, men and angels might follow ! 
Sincerity is always personal, the sense of right in the 
private soul, while it is the bond of the communit3 r ; 
yet not conventional in itself. This is the meaning of 
the proverb, " Corporations have no soul," which is 
true not only of moneyed, but of political, philanthropic 
and religious ones. We talk of an ecclesiastical con- 
sciousness ; an ecclesiastical conscience is a different 
thing ! It leads to Jesuitical reserve, suppression of 
truth and profession of falsehood to save the denom- 
ination ; and, though association is supposed to make 
men generous and humble each in himself, there is no 
individual conceit so gross as the self-importance of 
leadership and of our superiority to rival orders, in 
church or state. " Our Body," as if it were ours, and 
the spirit had left a corpse ! No Body is sincere. 
Policy with the best aim turns rnercy to a pretence ; as 
when, many years ago, a whole medical society in Bos- 
ton voted the alcohol a poison, with which every mem- 
ber of it prepared his medicines. 

Sincerit}^ implies an object in all speech beyond the 
speech itself. We hear conversation celebrated as the 
head of the fine arts. But it is spoiled by being its 
own end. " Making conversation " is ludicrous. Talk 
for the sake of talking is poor talk. It is to be hoped 
what is called " eloquence " will enter the list of those 
"Lost Arts," described by our friend in his lecture 
thirty years long. Goethe says the writer's business 
is not to make beautiful descriptions, but to describe 
beautiful things ; and the speaker's vocation is never 



102 THE RISING FAITH. 

to listen to his own voice, but lodge his meaning and 
enthusiasm in his auditors' hearts. 

There is an insincerity, arising when the imports 
exceed the exports of the mind, and all one's views are 
borrowed till there is no vision ; as a monument is cov- 
ered with inscriptions to hide the nature of the stone ; 
as the immigrants overcome what is native to the mind. 
How man}' garrulous, wise-looking people ought to be 
put on a spare diet of books and company, of concerts 
and interviews, to save them from pretences, and to 
recover their own mental strength and health ! Some- 
thing rude and strange would refresh us more than this 
artificial state. The caparison of a horse does not add 
so much beauty as clipping and shaving takes away ; 
and a little genuineness were worth more than affected 
courtesy. But for this we need mighty working of the 
Holy Ghost. 

Sincerity is a man's truth to his light. We must not 
call him insincere because he is not true to our light, 
if he be true to his own. Yet sincere no one perfectly 
is till he is true to the Light, which is no man's, of 
that unsetting Sun, by mortal or angel owned only as 
it is followed, and found as it is sought, being eter- 
nally conformed to the mind's e3'e, and one with sight. 

Can a man in the pulpit act as if having the feeling 
of his subject of which he is devoid ? Delsarte, recently 
deceased in Paris, whose system has been expounded 
in this country, taught for actors all the bodily signs of 
thought and feeling on a scheme and scale. When 
we are dead to the occasion, shall we, like a runaway 
soldier, desert ; or fish for our emotion with this mus- 
cular line and nervous bait of assumed gesture and 



SINCERITY. 103 

simulated look ? Rising with a well- written discourse 
in the desk, but conscious of no interest in the topic, 
shall the preacher turn his back and flee like Lot out 
of Sodom, and like those Jesus told not to wait for any- 
thing in the house ; or shall he do the best he can, and 
rather than disappoint, run the risk of sacrificing his 
audience to his manuscript ? Is it within mortal power 
to produce an equation between sentiment and speech ? 
Must we use the best language and assume a lofty man- 
ner to lift the lagging soul to a higher level, ourselves 
in despair of absolute truth ? In this business of spir- 
itual communication flesh has its part to play ; but it 
can assume no responsibility beyond the meaning of 
its silent partner. Were matter or a material com- 
pound all that is signified by soul, still we should want 
harmony in the atoms, and however in practice failing, 
no contradiction on principle could we afford. What 
I best remember of Henry Ware, professor of pulpit 
eloquence in Cambridge, is not any particular discourse, 
but his dropping one of his lectures, declaring himself 
fruitless and leaving the room. Abandoning on the 
spot whatever function to teach or comfort a man has 
no heart to, would improve the ministry and bless the 
church ; for no bands, black gown, or white surplice, can, 
like organic pretence of a lowly or sympathetic mind, 
cover falsehood in the clergy or turn Satan into an 
angel of light. Sincerity may consist with reserving 
what a third person has no right to know or a congre- 
gation cannot comprehend ; but not with any convey- 
ance of a sham. Paper counters are gross offers all 
the more that love and wisdom are of supreme price. 
Let not the standard down ! Our consciences are 



104 THE RISING FAITH. 

like clocks and watches which do well in the maker's 
or repairer's shop ; but, moved about and exposed to 
varying temperature, blows and dust, keep not correct 
time. How easy to regulate ourselves in our imag- 
ination alone ! But in the wind of passion, under the 
assaults of temptation, amid instances of impurity and 
heats of strife the works in us get out of order, and 
the chronometer divinely fashioned cannot be relied 
on. How many a man proud of his time-piece for not 
losing a second in a week, is himself the sport of incli- 
nation and has wasted his days ! " He is a soldier that 
never won a battle, an orator that could not make a 
speech, a path-finder that always lost his way, and a 
millionaire not worth a cent." Such an one may be put 
at odds with himself not by lack of ability, but by too 
many tendencies which in superabundant vigor neu- 
tralize each other, while inferior, but better harmon- 
ized minds sweep into success. Sincerity is the working 
of incompatible elements out of the character. 

But, in defect of feeling, why not take elocution for 
a substitute ? Because a true elocution expresses and 
is never put instead of the mental state. It is simply 
the means of getting our thoughts fairly out. It is as 
the midwife of Socrates to the soul, for delivery not of 
fictitious, but real emotion, which one ma}' have, yet 
through organic failure be unable to impart. Art is 
not falsehood. It never contradicts nature. It loses 
its name and becomes artifice, with a tinge of affec- 
tation or syllable of a lie. It is heart produced. If 
one ma}' publicly palm upon us signs that do not an- 
swer to his inward mood, why not in private too? 
What line of number or circumstance or occasion parts 



SINCERITY. 105 

mendacity from truth ? Eloquence is spontaneous com- 
munication ; elocution is the skill of honest talent to 
convey ideas which the spirit does not transpire. Nor 
will the actor on the stage, if more than a supernu- 
merary stick, for internal reality put any bodily airs. 
It is by no show or pretence of passion that Kean, 
Kemble or Booth becomes master of the theatrical sit- 
uation ; but by power to let loose the motives of the 
character they would represent, whose traits they must 
realize in imagination to incarnate in appearance. 
Concrete fact is principle in its last and weakest form ; 
that in which feeling ebbs and is spent. There are 
tales of those on the boards abusing their calling by 
being gross in the embraces, or too sharp with the dag- 
gers required by the passage in the play. But feigning 
itself must have a certain veracity when it is the busi- 
ness in hand. 

But the casuists ask us. Shall a merchant bring home 
his business cares, or hide the anxieties of the market, 
smoothing his brow ? They know not woman's nature 
who fancy she would be more content with the fair 
weather of a false sunshine than with a genuine cloud. 
Of all things she dislikes secrets in her spouse ; how- 
ever man has been so much the jealous lord as to drive 
her to have innocent ones of her own ! Her delight is 
in sympathy, and a share in all his troubles, if possible. 
more complete than in his joys. To have him sutler 
alone she altogether objects ; what was she made for 
but to relieve and console? TThen he is absent her 
solicitude wakes, watches his return, and imagines 
every disaster to which he may be exposed ; and she 
were ill-requited with his concealment of his care and 



106 THE RISING FAITH. 

cheated out of the privilege she most prizes for her sex. 
When the supreme master of human nature, Shakspeare 
tells us, Percy or Brutus keeps what is in hand from 
the wife, what repining and grief ! Portia considers the 
withheld confidence a loss of love. Lad}' Percy will 
break Harry's " little finger" unless he divulges to her 
what he is about ; but he, man-like and lord-like, an- 
swers with the proverbial distrust of any woman's 
keeping a secret. Better for womanhood to be taken 
into counsel, with such suspicious enterprizes of assas- 
sination and rebellion on foot ! At least the mas- 
culine burial in silence of great undertakings and 
important plans is treason to one's help-meet, and of a 
piece with her exclusion as an inferior from the after- 
dinner talk, club, vote, dissecting-room, civil office and 
legislative hall. 

The advocates of concealment admit it to be a ques- 
tion of more or less. The effect on the body may be 
different of medicine in a large or little pill ; is homoe- 
opathic hypocrisj^ no hurt but healing to the soul ? By 
what process shall we subdue all our naturally truth- 
telling members and organs to the semblance we would 
maintain, and make pretenders not only of our lips, but 
our manners and our looks ? In this frame of spirit 
and flesh we have not only one articulate speech, but a 
hundred tongues of nerve and motion, color and form. 
Countless infinitesimal lines and shades must be schooled 
to our purpose to complete the assumption or misrep- 
resentation. It must come from a manufactoiy more 
minute and subtle than of leathern visors or paper 
veils. A masquerade on principle, not for an evening 
and as a play, will be a very painstaking and expen- 



SINCERITY. 107 

sive affair ; and, although society and fashion make 
successful approaches in half the conversation we hear, 
it is a somewhat original system of ethics to introduce 
into pulpits and conventions and deliberative halls. 
If I maj' feign the feeling I have not, may I cliguise the 
feeling I have ? Be sure there is no exception to the 
law r of truth ! Everything in God's universe rushes to 
expression and publication. No seed in the ground or 
scud in the air tells a lie. Innocent duplicity, to do 
good ? It cannot be distinguished in the end from ap- 
pearing like the flower and being the serpent under- 
neath. 

In the game of politics, to talk of sincerity may 
seem satire. In case of a nomination disagreeable to 
them, have individuals the right to bolt ? Does not an 
argument in convention of his prerogative to violate at 
pleasure the conclusion he helps to form, insult mem- 
bership, and stultify the body to which one belongs ? 
In what capacity is he on the spot ; as a delegate to 
the meeting, or one of the human race ! The com- 
mittee on credentials would not admit, nor the pres- 
ident recognize, nor the assembly listen to him, as a 
man, if he were not also an integral part of the associ- 
ation, amenable to its polic} r and accepting its common 
law. Whether to put himself in this representative 
predicament, is the question beforehand to decide. 
We cannot combine incompatible claims. A man wjll 
not be the slave of his fellows. But neither must he 
be their tyrant, breaking all bonds with those who will 
not indorse his judgment and abide by his will. This 
is the principle of secession to enjoy the benefits of 
union, but be free to nullify its duties and eschew its 



108 THE RISING FAITH. 

tasks. Women, sometimes, insist on entering into all 
the pursuits of men ; yet are sore at any omission of 
peculiar courtesy to their sex. The cake they had 
eaten they would still have ! 

How far to come under party-obligations, is a matter 
well deserving to be discussed. Nothing better than 
an administration and an opposition, has yet been 
devised for the management of the State. Yet the 
moral sentiment, like so much oxygen in the air, will 
make its way into all civil arrangements ; the sense of 
justice prove superior to every written constitution ; 
and the higher law fall upon the card-castles of un- 
righteous expedienc} 7 like u a meteoric stone." In the 
church a concerted order of proceeding is still more 
sure to be disturbed. How absurd in reason, were it 
not an attempt at oppression to determine doctrine for 
the soul by a vote ! The form of worship may be pre- 
scribed ; and there is no infringement of liberty in 
what eveiy one observes or neglects as he will. But 
a debate on the concerns between the human spirit and 
the divine, with a view to embody the results in a bind- 
ing creed, all dissenters from which shall be under a 
ban, is a very tragic corned}' to play. No wonder 
David attributed a sense of humor to God ; for, if he 
that sitteth in the heavens can laugh at anything, it 
must be at the travesty of his own nature in our met- 
aphysics. If he hold airy one in derision, it is the the- 
ologian presuming to put into verbal propositions for all 
time the terms of peace with himself. Yet, in learned 
addresses, such projection is still assumed of the divine 
system in a perfect letter from a human hand. Even 
liberal Christians dream that the faith of churches can 



SINCERITY. 109 

be carried in sentences to synods by persons authorized 
to pledge their constituencies to articles which the 
s}~nods frame. 

But in fine, though truth be no private property, 
may I not withhold my thoughts, as a troop of sol- 
diers reserves its fire? What is the truth but my 
thought ? It is no abstract entity, but the mind per- 
ceiving the relations of things. Thought and truth are 
one ; and thought, if more than faint far-off heat- 
lightning, cannot be concealed ; but will thunder and 
strike. As well wrap fire in woollen, as conviction in 
carnal folds. It will burn through ! You can put a 
paper in your secretary, and lock it in a secret drawer, 
whose spring none knows but you ; but a persuasion in 
the escritoire of your breast were like a live coal in 
your bureau. But the people are not prepared ? What 
you so dread will not keep, but spoil like the preserved 
manna. Because Jesus was not understood, and had 
much to say his disciples could not immediately bear, 
what a conceit that there is nobody to comprehend us . 
now ! In this clay of agitation you will be appreciated. 
Never fear anybody will be overset, or the glass in our 
houses shivered by the wind of your gun. As reason- 
ably might Daguerre have kept back his photography, 
or Leverrier his new planet, as any thinker those ideas 
which are better sun-pictures and stars in a deeper 
firmament. The worst infanticide is of the births of the 
mind. By the vanishing from cowards of the vision, 
it is avenged. Bolting may be immoral for those who 
join a party with their bolt ready made. So Judas 
bolted ; and even a chief-priest were out of place if in 
the conclave only as a spy to betray. But the neces- 



110 THE RISING FAITH. 

sity, in conscience, of bolting in fact should teach us 
that parties have had their day ; and shall the man, 
refusing to be a political, consent to be an ecclesiastical 
slave? Let Orthodoxy or Heresy, Free Religion or 
Christianity, have no servant in my soul. I will not be 
a slave to myself, or follow the shadow of my own 
mean and mendacious past. I claim a liberty, older 
and more than Christ made me free with, of the sons 
of God. 



V. 

SEX. 

AN aeronant says, the voice of a woman can be 
heard twice as far as that of a man in a balloon. 
How well it deserves a hearing as it rises clear and 
shrill out of inveterate wrong ! What misfit of the 
sister to the brother's side she was taken from not to 
divide but multiply human nature, lie the blame where 
it will, when the worst feature of our civilization can 
have Social Evil for its name ! The way out of our 
narrowness may not be so easy as the wa}^ in. The 
weasel that creeps into the corn-bin has to starve him- 
self before he can leave by the same passage. As the 
last step in medicine is learning to prevent disease by 
anticipating morbid action or inaction in the cells of 
the nervous system, so prevent the disorder we call sin 
or crime ! An idealist biting his nails being asked 
what he was thinking of, answered, of what a wretched 
thing this life is. Truly much uneasiness, of which all 
this running round the world, which we call travelling, 
must be to get rid. How few happy marriages, we 
exclaim. Marriage is mischief, cry the Free Lovers, 
and use for their picture only black. Is life a tragedy, 
comedy, or farce ? If it be a symphony, the music is 

(in) 



112 THE RISING FAITH. 

too deep for our ear to catch. What way out of do- 
mestic trouble ? 

Is it to strike at the family? But that is the block 
or brick out of which the fabric is built. Father, 
mother and child are the human trinity, whose sub- 
stance must not be divided nor its persons confounded. 
As well reconstruct your granite out of the grains it is 
disintegrated into, as society out of the dissolution of 
wedded love. This orderly pile of houses in rows 
along the streets, this immense hive and honeycomb, 
with cells so distinct, yet joined together, is the com- 
munity. Wedlock is the foundation. Church and State 
the second and third stories of the building. But what 
abuses it covers, and what a whited sepulchre it some- 
times is, full of dead men's and dead women's bones, 
and all uncleanness ; so that a new school of honest 
reformers is provoked to disallow the bond ! We must 
listen and answer ; for the foundation of marriage is 
among the things that must be discussed, however 
breaches of its law be punished. When the parties to 
the contract " till death do us part " wake from their 
dream of delight, and become conscious of stronger 
affinities, shall they not illustrate the experiment of 
chemical combination on which Goethe founded his 
tale? " Shall they," wrote one, "stand looking at 
each other with murder in their eyes?" What busi- 
ness with murder in their eyes, more than with poison 
in the cup, death in the pot, or pistol in the hand? 
Hatred in the heart is murder in the eyes for anybody ; 
and they would be assassins together or apart. The 
plea of no more love is confession of crime. Love is 
duty, not inability or fate. With it we can get along 



SEX. * 113 

with any mortal ; nor could we live with angels dis- 
carding its bonds. The illusion is not choice of the 
wrong person, but the supposition of magic in any 
person to hold another without conscience by fealty of 
the fading flesh. But infinite selfishness revolts at dis- 
covering that the universe is not made to minister by 
some eternal decree to its delight, with a match made 
in heaven for its acme and crown. Ci I think she will 
make me happy " ? If that be your design in the rela- 
tion, be sure very long she will not ! If we abolish 
marriage for its disappointments or even its corrup- 
tions, why not annul society, government, the church, 
for the same reason? But no evil can equal anarchy, 
and any rule is better than none. " Is there any king 
here?" asked the Greek sage, on arriving at a town, 
ready to shake off the dust of his feet. But what in 
case of uncongeniality or disloyalty ? I knew a woman 
love an unfaithful man, forgive desertion, shield him 
from others' rebuke, call attention to his good qual- 
ities, and cast a cloak over the bad, fold him to her 
bosom despite his offence, and open her heart for the 
refuge that had failed elsewhere till ruin stared him in 
the face. I worshipped not the Virgin Mary, or her 
Mother immaculate by the Pope's decree, but this 
woman, whose quality I knew better than of those 
enshrined antiques ; surperstition having in my devo- 
tion no jot. How was she consoled ? Not by pouring 
her tale into the ear of any other man ! She coveted in 
no third person the dear deceptive sympathy of sex. 
To her untouched purity and intangible love there were 
no solace in being unfaithful herself. Beware of having 
wounds healed or handled by a physician who will find 
8 



114 THE RISING FAITH. 

his own account in the cure ! There are counsellors 
who are traitors : there is a pity which is hypocrisy ; 
there is in the distressed citadel an enemy that beckons 
the caller and opens the door ; and the worst treason 
lurks hid in a tear. Some magnetism of human kind- 
ness we need to sustain life. If home lacks, we must 
seek it abroad ; as, when his own board fails, a man 
goes to another table or stands at a booth in the street. 
But let it be pure food, not tainted meat ! God's curse 
on the sympathy that is a trap for the unwary, like a 
bit of cheese or kernel of grain in the closet or the 
woods, for some poor beast's life ; the escape from 
trouble a strait to torment or whirlpool to devour. 
Blessed not who surrender, but endure ! Suffering is 
God's tool to cut life into beauty ; and he that bolts 
from trial, would shake off the Supreme Designer's 
hand. 

The attempt to destroy marriage is, in the guise of 
freedom, a doctrine of individualism reduced to absurd- 
ity, gone mad and run into the ground. We reach 
this destructive extreme through a false notion of so- 
ciety as our creature when it is our creator, prior to and 
no more made by us than God is. The community is 
formed ; but private human creatures do not b}^ any 
will or bargain form it, as is imagined by the French 
or American democracy that would put the individual 
before the whole. Pure individuality is an empty fig- 
ment ; and the preacher of a man's and woman's right 
to do as they list irrespective of the common law is an 
individualist, not an idealist. He postpones the in- 
teger to the units and integrity to caprice. We are not 
all sovereigns, as a Yankee said of us in the House of 



SEX. 115 

Lords ; but there is one sovereign reason, holding the stat- 
ute-book in its political hand, which the soul may appeal 
from, but the citizen obe}^s, from respect to the general 
order essential to peace ; no maxim being more a mis- 
take than that individuals give up part of their rights 
to secure the rest, when this consent bestows rights 
they never could buy. Have the Apache tribe more 
rights than the inhabitants of Massachusetts? The 
common law may work particular harm ; but none com- 
parable to our oversetting its bar into universal wreck. 
If for opposing any unfair decree my blood must run 
out or stagnate in jail, it shall quicken other circula- 
tions, or be gathered up every drop ! Marriage is one 
social verdict, a sentence of the human jury we are 
bound by. 

But what is marriage, — a ceremony of priest's word 
or of a wedding-ring ? Is it not one heart — part and 
counterpart in two bodies — without whose revolving 
chime the marriage-bell rings in vain? Marriage is 
twofold, half in the outer sanction society must have 
for self-protection from being disordered and dissolved. 
The pledge is to my companion and to my kind ; to 
the community around and posterity before. The 
double seal must be on the inner table and the written 
page. Is the bride always more anxious than the 
bridegroom for the printed proof, because of more fear 
of a broken vow? Conjugal purity and fidelity are 
not only private virtues, but pillars of the common- 
wealth, which they are enemies of their race who pull 
at. Fornication, adultery, desertion, incest, mutual 
and self-abuse are not only sins and vices, but crimes ; 
for society is no doll, idol, lay-figure or thing we have 



116 THE RISING FAITH. 

done and can undo or undress ; but a live power we 
live from and must serve, being not its producers, but 
product ourselves. 

Easy divorce is no remedy ; for how wanton mar- 
riages will be multiplied as obligations rashly taken 
are lightly laid aside ! People do as they please 
enough now. We do not need to be made reckless by 
law. The whole range of our charter requires no nar- 
rowing of respect for engagements, of keeping ap- 
pointments, and heeding one's word ; and only a li- 
centious temper wants more liberty than it can spin into 
duty, such being of the nature of what Shakespeare 
calls " liberties of sin." Tough is the material, and hard 
the task ; our life is stitched into our work, and in our 
heart-strings the needle finds its thread, which our hand 
is held to the toil of providing till no more wool is left 
on the spindle all whose web is another's. As well I re- 
member the long afternoon buzz of the wheel that 
turned the white rolls into yarn in the chamber where 
I was born, so I know how woman stands by the dis- 
taff whence man receives the precious stuff so painfully 
wrought. But that for every one is a true signal which 
the King was to give Quentin Durward in the tale. 
There is a heaven above us, and no persuasion is possi- 
ble but that into some other or unseen part of this 
world the overtaxed and exhausted flee. "Who are 
these in white robes ? " Such as "came out of great 
tribulation, having washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb." Mostly women, the 
innocent blood, their garments are so strangely bleached 
b}r, that of no far-off, long-dead, supernaturally divine 
victim, but their own ! But what unwholesome, menda- 



SEX. 117 

cious flatteiy that woman is victim alone ! Domineer- 
ing women plenty in ranks of fashion set to the spouse 
the stint to supply their lavish unprincipled luxury of 
show. Who has not seen the female tyrant hold the 
reins, and brandish the whip, and order her mate, as 
she flirts and sports with other men ! Not the ordi- 
nary variety, but the monstrous sort. Long-suffering 
sex, true the proverb of your having more fortitude 
than men ! Why not, with so much more to bear ? 
Your fortitude is our accusation. Your patience is 
our imposition. Yet imagine not in lower loyalty a 
relief! Causes exist of divorce; but oft cannot the 
mismatched have judgment to live apart, without in- 
voking authority of law ? Live together as they will, 
no name or form of marriage can consecrate a loveless 
chamber, or make it aught but a haunt of shame. But 
the ceasing of love is deeper ignominy ; and no audacity 
so affronts heaven as to plead its lack for an excuse of 
abandonment, and apology for new attachments, where 
roving fancy leads or low appetite may lure. Selection, 
it is called. It is sophistr}-, profanation of love, 
apotheosis of lust, depraved logic, destitution of imag- 
ination, sentiment or romance, and rebellion against the 
instinct of truth betwixt soul and soul to promote in- 
surrection of the flesh, with whatever honest}' and per- 
sonal purity from promiscuous habit it may be combined. 
Unrestricted intercourse is not the remedy, but worst 
stage of the disease. No impulse of our nature, 
wherein defects of self-government must not be sup- 
plied by enactments which are the security given ; the 
hea\y bond each and every one is under to the common 
mind, without whose weight and general prevalence the 



118 THE RISING FAITH. 

appeal to the Higher Law, of which occasion makes a 
necessity so grand, is a pretence or delusion like the 
Anabaptist, or that of the Fifth Monarchy Men in 
England, whose rule would have been the ruin of the 
realm. No custom-house officer and no soldier may 
picture the ideal state. Who prays not for decease of the 
office of the gun, meant and made to give pain and 
destroy life ? No red-coat or blue-coat, but every man 
and woman to do as they list? It is a vision of what 
might come when all is gone to glory ! Perfect free- 
dom in our acts and relations ? Freedom to build such 
a bridge as the passengers were drowned and burnt 
under at Richmond, to rear tumbling architecture, or 
to make kindling-stuff of negroes in Louisiana, or to 
steer live cargoes of passengers on to the rocks at Cape 
Race ; or for the passion to rove, which Goethe says 
" believes in no rights but its own, all other rights 
vanishing before it?" Well does Mittler, in Goethe's 
novel of " Elective Affinities," score with his sharp 
tongue whoever by word or deed strikes a blow at 
marriage ; one passage being of a husband angry at 
his wife's looking over his shoulder as he read, but 
delighted when it is done by the girl he doats on, and 
proceeds to kill by the remorseless attraction her in- 
vincible purity finds no escape from but in starving to 
death ; the most pathetic posture in all modern romance. 
The not spotless Goethe, when war threatens Weimar, 
makes the woman, he had lived with, his lawful wife ; and 
many suitors for one mate show in what scenes utter 
freedom would end. 

Abstinence or a solitary life is not the remedy. For 
humane reasons some noblv maintain the single state. 



SEX. 119 

They who, without such, stop in their persons the vital 
current in which the generations flow, are thieves, 
having received what they never repay. Such bank- 
ruptcy is of how many of Shakspeare's exquisite son- 
nets the ingeniously varied theme ! The power, that 
presides over, would not quench our passions, only 
restrain their madness, ana purge of all foulness our 
human clay. It uses us, but forbids us to use others. 
Has a man such fondness as elevates the woman, and 
a woman the devotion a man is raised by ; and does 
impulse in neither debase ? Do both love without seek- 
ing for love ? Does the sister remember none w^ill love 
her who respects not herself, and her male brother 
judge that his judgment judges him? Then, though b} r 
no statement of social science the sexual problem be 
solved, it will be settled in life, in harmony through 
difference and the charity that is truth. 

Regeneration is not the reined}^, but right generation. 
We have learned, said a social agitator, that whoever 
is born at all, is well-born. But how many are as ill- 
born as the man of whom Jesus said he had better not 
have been born ! Not well made, said one of some 
puny children. Not half made, an old man replied. 
Untrue parentage is the root of all evil ; and, if the 
priest's charge to those at the altar to confess any 
impediment were obeyed, how many couples would part 
before they were joined ! Though no civil or ecclesias- 
tical power undertake to withhold, save for nearness of 
blood, the conjugal privilege, there are stronger rea- 
sons often why it should not be assumed ; and what 
are consumption, fever, small-pox, cancer and menin- 
gitis, idiocy and madness, but God's witnesses, reporters 



120 THE RISING FAITH. 

of the sin, gaunt ghosts in court, judges more dread 
than sit on any bench, not pleasant to look at ; senti- 
nels that do not cry in the night, all serene, like those 
I heard in Teneriffe ! We care for improving oxen and 
horses, roses and grasses, more than women and men, 
whose vital organisms, receptacles of guilt, conduits 
of shame, are how often monuments of ignorance 
and vehicles of death, that have no right to be here ; 
and it were better to propagate poisonous plants, ser- 
pents and wild beasts. 

But what help ? It takes all sorts to make the world, 
which we must take as it is and do the best with, as 
we have the poor alwaj^s with us ; and Quetelet's tables 
will tell us how much crime and disease must be in the 
coil which we cannot unwind ! This is the Fate, in 
Turkey, of the Mahometan captain who, as his engine 
breaks, lets the ship go down, saying, Great is Allah ; 
when a Yankee would put his prayer into ingenuity to 
mend. Optimism is piety in theory, but in practice the 
unpardonable sin ; and acquiescence in things anywhere 
as they are blasphemes the Holy Ghost. We do not 
give up a field to stones and thorns, or leave a swamp 
or blind drain to breed typhus and venomous flies. We 
at least complain of unhealthy nuisances in the neigh- 
borhood, of foundering steamers, sinking causeways 
and crashing trains, which in the worship of Mammon 
are part of the order of service ; the temple, as we so 
religiously say, being the whole world ! Shall these 
devotions, old as any sacrifices in Mexico, or suicides 
in Japan, go on? Yes, until we have a better race. 
Nature is honest. The working of every invariable 
law is God telling his children the truth, and our ao 



SEX. 121 

cident, as we call it, a pretty phrase for a human lie. 
Ever}^ explosion, conflagration or collision, is veracity 
above and falsehood below ; order on one side, but 
disorder as it comes from and touches us ; and when 
arrives the saved remnant, to whom every house and 
hotel should be open to atone for the iniquity of the 
mishandled ship they paid their passage in for the 
freezing breakers of the cruel shore — while the unmur- 
muring dead are blasted out from the sunken deck, and 
the living claim no damages — we get rid of by passing 
them on in irregular, dangerous night trains, like cattle- 
cars, with no chance to sleep for a week. Does no ac- 
tion lie at the divine bar ? 

We are } r et an inhuman race. We do not begin fair. 
For a better start goes up the cry of agony from the 
elements of humanity in creatures not existing, dumb 
to the ear in the womb of futurity, yet our clients 
to-day with their weal or woe hanging on our counsels 
and acts, to hallow sex from impure indulgence and 
consecrate it to its end, in that line of worthy pos- 
terity on earth which has too an immortal reach. But 
a perfect human form how rare ! We have been all 
more or less hurt on our journey hither. We have 
met with some accident in our nature worse than being 
overset in a carriage. Says a wise physician, there is 
an evil inheritance in our frame, a poisonous humor 
more universal and injurious than all the effects of 
intoxicating drinks. Much is said of the coming man. 
But the woman, his mother, must come before he can ! 
Without a Mary there would have been no Christ. One 
man, but not one woman, in a thousand Solomon found : 
yet, when found, what a power in the fair figure, not 



122 THE RISING FAITH. 

to fling our sins in our face, but to burn and shine them 
away ! No individual prophet, but a true womanhood 
is the desire of all nations, redeemer from transgres- 
sion and Messiah of the world ; the heavenly Mother as 
well as Father we need, and have not had because of 
the long oppression that has kept the woman out of 
her rights, her faults thus arising from her wrongs, like 
those of the slave. Open to her the path, she will show 
as many elect as does the man ; and the preacher be 
shamed out of that proverb reckoned as Holy Writ, 
though no high thought, but scorn of base experience, 
inspired the pen. 

Sanctified from birth is no senseless phrase. How 
the annunciation to the Virgin rolls and makes the 
globe its perennial choir ! But what a biting satire 
to suppose in human history incorrupt conception but 
once, for seers to predict, an angel to herald, a heav- 
enly troop detailed to sing, and painters like Murillo 
amid clouds of cherubs to draw ; a superstitious mir- 
acle in what should be a common event, the human 
father in a single case eliminated as if through him the 
inevitable taint ; and God insulted in the notion that 
the constitution he is the root of is unclean, and purity 
in a solitary case among countless millions smuggled 
in at the postern and back-door of this great palace of 
the soul we live in, by illegimate casting into the shade 
of disgrace of every lawful birth ! Elsewhere is normal 
attraction, the planets not whipped into the traces. So 
the time is at hand for no binary stars to draw more 
smooth than man and woman that belong together. 
Jesus was no exception. Both genealogies contradict 
the misinterpretation by which Luke introduces him 



sex. 123 

through the broken boundary of law. Gocl keeps that 
fence up ; never a missing rail or gap in the wall of 
his holy city ; onl}~ Jesus was the child of love and 
purity. What atheistic misanthropy will pronounce 
him sole offspring, when there are thousands beside? 
The kingdom of God is a solecism, but for the hope 
that such will be ever}' child at length, in the decease 
of the convenient or mercenary marriage, in abjuring 
profane pleasure as the end, and in devoting the sex- 
ual correspondence to an ennobled kind, which it is 
a tragedy embracing all others to miss. Had but Job 
and Judas cause to curse the birthday? How many 
babes ought never to have been ! Said the old min- 
ister to the indecent boys in the gallery : I am sorry 
you came. Though pity fold a living thing, yet com- 
passion would how often put it out of pain, commis- 
eration be glad when it is dead, justice denounce the 
deed it presents, however covered with forms of propri- 
ety and law, wisdom prevent the arrival of the wretched 
freight, and truth pronounce the so-called illegitimate 
cargo of sound stuff and precious goods dearer to God 
and man than the protected flirusy article that has 
passed test of social custom and paid the established 
toll, adding to the king's revenue not a jot ! Refuse, 
O priest, to buiy the heretic in holy ground? Xay, 
find first the heretic, and refuse to baptize him in holy 
water ! What matter in what soil the worn-out corse 
may rest and rot ! the more sacred the better, if the 
relics of sickness and sin are put away ; for at the 
quick term of a miserable existence men and angels 
should rejoice. But hesitate or weep in your welcome 
of a being that begins an incarnate malediction and 



12i THE RISING FAITH. 

blot ! That first step is costly, not the last one into 
the grave. 

Whence, but from the missing of a mutual ownership, 
whose yoke would be liberty and rest, this universal 
complaint of want of sympathy •? You have parents, 
partners, all friendship of kith and kin, but not sym- 
pathy. No man, cries David, cared for my soul. It 
is the general malady. T\ T e are all in this case. If 
you could but find somebody to understand you, how 
your felicity were made ! But none enters into our 
secret thought, encourages our aspiration, answers our 
affection, meets us half way, or heals our wounds. An 
Eastern maid came across some thousand miles of land 
and salt water to call out in London streets the name 
and become the bride of the traveller who in passing 
had won her love ; and how gladly we would take the 
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of the sea or make our bed in that low T place the 
psalmist calls hell, not to escape God, but to find a 
man or woman to comprehend us ! I think with com- 
fort, said one, of nr^ coffin, I am with this question so 
perplexed. The malady is unharmony. Gross pleasure 
is not our object ; but a hunger, there is none to feed, 
a thirst more burning than the sailor's in mid ocean 
beside his empty casks ; and this drinking the brine of 
angenial companionship is our woe. 

Incompatible tempers; so unhappy connections are 
explained. But God is not mocker more than he is 
mocked. He means a concord, a symphony, of which 
all Beethoven wrote are but sign. But one wilful 
instrument untunes the whole orchestra. The player 
said, — It is my own violoncello, when Mendelssohn 



sex. 125 

reproved him for a false note. The chicken from the 
egg and the egg from the chicken ; how escape this 
Hebrew ring and vicious circle of the new child from 
the old parent and the new parent from the old child ? 
Friends say, pra}~er helps them not ; many collects, 
canticles and Bible-readings leave us the same ; the 
gilt hand-book of petition, the handsome copy of the 
Scriptures on the shelf or under a pile of other volumes 
on the centre-table is not accepted as a legal tender for 
the debt of sin or entrance-fee into heaven. The keeper 
of the gate of paradise, above or below, takes no such 
bribe. You shall deliver your soul only with agony of 
Pauline groans as you grapple with inordinate desires 
and board this piratical ship manned with cravings for 
your neighbor's goods, only by slaying with the sword 
of the spirit the covetous heart. He, that preaches 
faith and is the victim of lust, is a wolf with but added 
disadvantage of sheep's clothing ; unlike the true shep- 
herd he quaffs another's blood instead of shedding 
his own, refusing to lay aside the robe that must be 
stripped off! All sin may be pardoned but the covert 
it hides in, which must be broken up. 

For preventive of mischief, which we dare not fathom, 
acquaint the young with their own frame. What avails 
proficiency in grammar and history, music and French, 
learning the size of the earth and distance of the sun, 
calculating a transit or eclipse, the philosophy of sea- 
sons and tides? The occultation of no planet is so 
baleful as wanting knowledge of the laws of their own 
body and soul. Hence what customs, which we know 
not how to analyze into the proper proportions of 
calamity and crime ! At early dawn I saw that dismal 



126 THE RISING FAITH. 

coach, no window lets light into, the prison-van at the 
station ; and men and women enter for no pleasure-trip 
at its inhospitable door — one youth with } T ellow curls 
the last — all bundled in the dark together for court and 
jail. The shadow of the little vehicle reached far against 
the rising sun and seemed to fall on every temple ! 

When, for temptation, shall instruction be put? 
Take the world as it is ? No, mend it at every point. 
So thinks the ant lugging the sand-grain to make or re- 
pair his house. So think I lifting back from my beach 
with an aching back the round or ragged stones that 
the sea, which ages do not weary, has washed down 
from the cliff. The bee or beaver is example for our 
house-cleaning and putting in order the world. But 
reform is patchwork without renovating the race, which 
it will follow every waj-, as floods the moon. But how 
bad blood runs debauched and drunken, foul or inflamed, 
from father to son, and a haughty temper goes down ! 
I knew of a certain family that never considered others 
more than their gravel-walk ! Grace has a hard time 
in the house which secretes enough of it to renew a 
run-down colon}^. It will be captious, howsoever you 
are kind. Against stubbornness and stupidit}^ innate, 
the gods strive in vain ; and it is not wrong to pray 
with David, that such a generation may be cut off. 
We mourn not when proud and quarrelsome clans dis- 
appear more than when snakes and bears vanish or 
are driven from the wilderness or wood. Individuals 
let us cherish and bless ! Be just to the copper and 
ebon} 7, as to the ivory color in mankind. But, if red 
skin and black should be sloughed off in course of 
nature, Providence will make no ado ; and, if peevish 



sex. 127 

or lascivious people fail of issue, there can be no hu- 
mane lament ; for a grander strain of vital inheritance 
is our want, of which all the benedictions that shall 
make the music of the millennium must be composed. 
Eight relation of man with woman, and of all women 
with all men, is the missing master-string. 

The proper personality of woman is of all truths 
most important to affirm. Is she the victim? such let 
her refuse to be ! When she stands on her feet, is her 
hand of worth. There are, says a woman, too many 
of us ; but wherefore, save to be independent, is she in 
excess of the population, with right to vote in some- 
thing more important than a political election, namely, 
the disposal of herself? Her masculine mate carries 
his refusal of her peerage even into heaven, giving to 
angels, save of his own gender, no name. The affable ^ 
faitlij ul , executive angel? Oh, ill-married Milton, whom 
thy own daughters wished out of the way, and who 
dost demoralize still with thy treatise on divorce, is 
it only and always some translated or prototype man, 
Michael, Gabriel, Uriel ? The Florentine Dante learned 
from love to be more courteous ! 

Liberated womanhood be our motto, not Free Love, 
if that mean, instead of spiritual option, licentious 
practice and various choice. For freedom is not a prin- 
ciple. Truth, goodness, justice, beauty are principles, 
or all one ; but freedom is a mode, room for principle 
to act in, as space is God's opportunity and workshop. 
First, law, then liberty to keep its line, while the 
motive of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" heads the pro- 
gramme of all its music. The colonial struggle and 
task of African emancipation have, for the time, made 



128 THE RISING FAITH. 

freedom our foremost thought. But, in logical or 
psychological order, the stage is not of so much con- 
cern as the play ; and a play of folly or iniquity is not 
■worth the candle or the boards. Duties must make the 
equation with rights, and obedience is the cap-stone, if 
liberty be the cap. The trumpeter in Hunt's picture 
with his cry, Freemen to arms, and the angels that 
blow through flaring tubes on the canvas of the old 
painters their long blasts, call to no privilege which is 
not equity, and the equivalent of honor ; and, while we 
hearkened not, the gentle breeze of humanity rose into 
the whirlwind of war, and sounds of harmony were 
wrecked in discordant screams. 

But it is nobod}''s business what private tie any woman 
may have with any man? The ruffians in the streets 
took this view of adultery in a famous and often cited 
case. It is captivating to the natural man, old Adam, 
primeval creature, aboriginal beast ; and were society 
an accident, not an essence, it might be true. But, for 
no sharer of a common nature, is there such prerogative 
of privacy or isolation. What thought or procedure so 
sequestered or hermetically sealed as not to poison or 
heal? Is my plague or small-pox mine, so that you 
have with it no concern? Let there be hospital and 
red flag, for public warning of infection that is worse ! 
A quality cannnot be insulated like electricity. Human 
hearts are not clumb-bells. Their softest pulsations 
how loud, and they vibrate how far ! Xo hiding of 
goodness ; no spiritual quarantine ; communication is 
unavoidable, and publicity is the moral law. The fond 
word, in doting ears, may make a continent its sound- 
ing board, press and parlor its whispering galleries, 



sex. ■ 129 

mortal breasts its chambers of reverberation to ring it 
on to the clay of judgment, after all the noise of the 
gale and resonance of cannon have died awa}\ In 
your secluded opportunity you are on your honor, and 
peril too. By her whom you insulted, in her sentence 
on you to a visitor, your character is wrecked ! I think 
of the affront when I think of you ; I read the mark on 
your forehead when I meet you ; and by no struggle 
can you loosen the cement of what from your person 
every wind blows abroad. Tremble in season before- 
hand at the exposure, which is not at the mercy of 
any impertinent meddler, and comes by no whim of 
gossip or scandal, nor can be withstood by any resent- 
ment or dignified silence, nor disposed of as an out- 
rage of eavesdroppers or reporters, but takes place by 
a law ! Who counts the spies in God's employ, detec- 
tives which no cunning outwits ? He has sheriffs with 
writs for violators of statutes that cannnot be re- 
pealed, and whose adjustment must be not of them to 
us, but us to them ; and whoso, however honored, 
would shield his fault by assuming secret self-appropri- 
ation of its knowledge, is blind to the retributions of 
history, and has not read the roll of names glorious 
but for a single blot. 

Pure individuality exists no more than a single mag- 
netic pole. You are your brother's or sister's keeper : 
hence the right of search into whatever on your prem- 
ises is harbored or clone. His neck is like any other 
man's, said Cromwell of Charles I. ; his blood is like 
ours, said the French peasant of Louis XVI. In the 
human solidarity are no interstices ; we are atoms 
in the sum ; and whoever fancies himself a larger 
9 



130 THE RISING FAITH. 

monad, with peculiar rights and title to grasp, should 
remember the text : " When the Lord maketh inquisi- 
tion for blood he forgetteth not the cry of the humble." 
What a clamor against lordly abusers of their strength 
to the undoing of the weak, such as the Roman Virgil 
or the Tuscan bard never heard, rises as we listen to 
the last decrees ! 

Yet we are wronged hj rumor running into extrav- 
agant surmise of guilt. The old dogma of total de- 
pravity is dead ; but a modern lie takes its place of 
imputing actual impurity to all mankind. Hamlet's 
word to Ophelia, — Trust none of us, is construed not 
as an unjust slur, but sober advice ; and it needs not 
Isabella's speech in " Measure for Measure," to her 
brother, to convince us the clergy are no better than 
the rest, so widely on grounds of fact or fanc}~ their 
conduct is brought into doubt. Why should there be 
a different standard for them? We keep no clerical 
laundry to wash all the cloth worn by the profession ; 
nor have any of its members more title, than other 
men to rest in silence under accusations of guilt, as 
though reputation for them were a peculiar defence ; 
but rather, if innocent, they should cry out like John 
Bmryan, — I def\ r an}' woman on earth, in heaven or 
hell, to witness against me. The curse of celibacy in 
the corruption of the priest claiming special prerog- 
atives has reached beyond Rome, to prove domestic 
life the true condition for all. Says Francis Galton : 
If the Protestant, like the Catholic clergy, had never 
married, Berzelius, Euler and Wollaston would not 
have been born. 

Marriage is arraigned as a conventional arrangement, 



SEX. 131 

not a natural law. Is civil government, religion, wor- 
ship according to nature? Is only that savage state 
natural, from which man has a natural and irresistible 
tendency to depart ? Is the crude planet all of nature 
here, or is every structure of beauty part of it, as much 
as the balance of land and sea? That marriage an- 
swers to nature would appear from a recent report in 
France that health and life are quadruple, under its 
sanction, be} T ond human thriving in unpermitted ties ; 
and we need no argument of its bearing on issues 
larger than organic force ; for the perfection of man is 
to be more than a splendid animal ; and only a partial 
analogy for him can be drawn from the vegetable or 
brute. To leave out his moral nature is like omitting 
the base line in a Coast Survey. "We must not prop- 
agate insanity, infirmity, or disease ; but instinctive 
fitness of the manly and womanly in any pair is more 
sagacious than any rule science is yet prepared to 
apply. The gypsy fruit on the family -tree, sometimes 
of large size and wild fascinating flavor, is more 
commonly puny and sour. How it is flung away, a 
foundling on the door-stone, or floats a wretched freight 
on the sea, or is abortive through violence of sin and 
shame ! We must not press physical values too far. 
There are qualities to propagate more precious than 
crude strength. 

"For nature crescent does not grow alone in thews and 
bulk." 

Isaac Newton could have been put into a quart when 
he was born. Was ever more in less cubic contents? 



132 THE RISING FAITH. 

The sun and moon and all the host of heaven shrank to 
revolve in that little rim, and hung their gravitations 
on the thread of that quivering life ; and a puff of wind 
to blow out that tin}' flame would have extinguished 
the gloiy of the firmament. But on what carnal plan 
could the great astronomer have been forecast? How 
lay the train for a Moses, Milton, or Kant? "Thine 
eye saw my substance yet imperfect ; and in thy book 
all my members were written." What faculties have 
been wrapped in frames too frail for any prudence to 
plot ! "We saw Channing and Allston walk the street, 
pallid and faint, while they moved the world with their 
eloquence and art. If Plato's scheme was barren, how 
shall smaller speculations succeed? Instinct may be 
illuminated, supplemented and regulated, but not dis- 
placed ; and no cut-and-dry terms which any social 
theory would substitute for wedlock, has better promise 
than the so dreadfully refuted reasons of state in formal 
contracts tried b} T royal blood. 

Love exceeds and outlasts lineage. What further 
issue do the gold and diamond weddings contemplate ? 
The door, which gray hairs come in at to greet the 
guests, communicates with the upper house of shining 
mansions ! Let us hold up the ideal union, and not 
suffer to what are called exuberant natures that allow- 
ance of excess which gets no example or apology from 
beasts in the wood or cattle in the field ! If we pity 
those hurried awa}- by passion and melting in hotter 
fires of compunction ; if art relents to draw the picture 
of Heloise and Abelard breaking over false restraints 
in the church ; if we must survey with interest of sym- 
pathy Schaeffer's picture of Francesca di Rimini and her 



sex. 133 

lover in the whirling cloud of hell, with Dante and 
Virgil looking on ; if we pardon current or historic 
trespass atoned for and repented of; we must let none 
who openly or with unblushing Irypocrisy strike down 
conventional guards of purity, plead for their offences 
an} 1 - principle of a higher law. There is no law heeded 
by such but " the law of the members " against that of 
the mind ; and no court on earth or in heaven to ab- 
solve. Any church, that stands warrant, must tremble ; 
any Orthodoxy, that defends them, will totter ; any 
Christianity, that dares apologize, will before Radical 
pietj- pass as a breath. There could be no such card 
for Free Religion as Christian corruption. In the 
laxity of our accredited religion a leaning tower over- 
hangs the city of God. The wreath of smoke through t 
the deck will soon be a burning of the vessel to the 
water's edge. Justice must spare no transgressor's 
fame, though touching him shake the centre pole of 
the believers' tent. Richly endowed constitutionally 
is the man ; therefore to be more largely furnished and 
indulged ? But is there no command over impulse and 
desire? Is the Decalogue gone? " The spirit of the 
prophets is subject to the prophets." When it is a 
spirit not of divination, it ought to be quenched ! The 
grave, David dug, has a voice, echoed from how many 
other graves ! 

We learn from the lower tribes. How selection of mates 
is hinted as they rise in rank and dignity ! The fishes 
creeping on the bottom or in schools, such as the mack- 
erel the water is alive with, and the cattle upon a 
thousand hills, live more or less promiscuous ; but the 
birds pair. Coleridge speaks of " the wedded and 



134 THE RISING FAITH, 

divorceless swallow." The lordly cock keeps his harem ; 
the rain musters his flock ; the goat butts whoever would 
approach him or his family ; the bull with his pawing 
hoofs tosses sand into the air, and gores intruders, a 
terror in every pasture ; and there are creatures plenty 
to litter and spawn, till the ascending rounds on the 
ladder of life bring us to that one to one, we call wed- 
lock, whose sanctity is implied in the humor that 
inquires, — Did you tie the knot fast? Strange that 
woman, already suffering most from untruth, should 
risk more points in the game that goes so hard with 
her, by ever trusting all to a mood such as Peter the 
Great was small enough to indulge ! We cannot bind 
the soul that would leave our side, 

" Xor detain her vesture's hem, 
Nor the palest rose she nung 
From her summer diadem." 

Let her be at large, but under that duty which is 
deity in our affections, as among the rolling orbs ! 
Horse or locomotive will shatter the ill-joined carriage 
or car ; and our fortunes need the firm vehicle as well 
as fiery heart. 

We want correspondence with our whole nature, of 
which marriage may fail ! But does other connection 
succeed? Are the sharpest bickerings those by the 
family hearth? Married or unmarried are of course 
destined for each other, and going to love till the su:> 
expires, and river and sea go dry ! See the poems of 
Robert Burns ! But his eternal fealty lasted how long? 
What logicians are the passions ! The sophists, that 
talked with Socrates, had no such dialectic skill. Did 



sex. 135 

Byron's leave to choose turn out better than Burke's 
fidelity to choice? Unwedded Adam and Eve rose to 
reproaches from their dream of delight. There is no 
deliverance in Free Love. Oaths do not produce 
treachery ! It is more common among those who never 
swore at the altar to be true. For the hundred mur- 
ders, in the last twelve-month, there is no explanation 
in the conjugal link. Poor girls, shot or stabbed for 
declining importunate offers, or for refusing to submit 
to unbridled desires, or for a doubtful position between 
rival claims, or in haunts of shame, are ten to one 
woman slaughtered by her spouse. Injured, deserted 
maidens kill a hundred to one poisoned by the lawful 
wife. Not wedlock is the ulcer ; but boundless lust. 
To pair off save for guilty cause, is not only a sin, but 
an unsettling of foundations deeper than in any Dec- 
laration of Independence or Bill of Eights, and a 
levelling of bulwarks against an ocean of appetite. 
Why was it made so deep and stormy ? Wlrv harder 
to curb than the Equinox-gale, or sea beating on the 
Hollander's d}'kes ? Love is the life-preserver ; hatred 
is murder ; and what is hate but the sensibility averted 
that might embrace, as Othello's smothering was his 
once so cordial hand. 

Our affections must not be slaves held to service. 
But is all debt or dut} T servility ? Then wipe the word 
obligation out of your lexicons and laws ; for nature's 
necessities are tyrannies, and the gravitation despotic 
that binds atoms together and " preserves the stars 
from wrong." There must forsooth be no centripetal or 
centrifugal force ; no curve of discretion, but flying off 



136 THE RISING FAITH. 

at a tangent, till universal dissoluteness and disintegra- 
tion be the name for God ! 

Principles are not abstract, but relative. Is freedom 
a principle? So was slavery when the captive gladly 
paid service for life. The marriage-roof protects more 
free love worthy the name in America, German}', Eng- 
land, than wanders without proper home or cover in 
Italy, Utah or France. Is the buffalo, whose black- 
horned head you will have perhaps nailed at your gate, 
free because he gallops over the prairie with the herd ? 
Freedom is, not to brandish rifle and tomahawk, or 
break bounds any way ; not to slip in gutters, be 
bruised against stones or torn by thorns, but to conform 
to law ; and, however we so baptize the propensity, 
on whose neck we throw the reins, it is a false chris- 
tening. 

Love is not an appetite, but sentiment. It is ab- 
sorbed in its object ; and may be known by that test. 
It never absorbs its object into itself. It rests in it, 
and does not rub round it, to come back again with the 
self-pleasing motion of a dog or cat. It is discipline 
as well as delight. The finest offspring is not of those 
who as tame echoes blend so you cannot tell them 
apart ; but of a spirit high as it is gentle, neither party 
disappearing in the other. How I hate to see some 
meek woman vanish in her usurping mate ! Better the 
step elastic as an Arab racer. I never, said one of our 
Sultans, consult the women in business, — not even 
their own. But action and reaction form the several 
wills, make the best concord, with reason for curb ; and 
at the first goad, to burst, like unbroken steers, from 
rectitude, is chaos worse than the earth's " without form 



sex. 137 

and void." Free love is not to desert and pick to 
pieces, as in the village shop which one called a 
dissecting-room, where scarce the victims' bones re- 
mained. 

Be marriage then not abandoned but improved ! Its 
old formula has been well ridiculed : With this ring I 
thee wed, is sorcery ; with my body I thee worship, 
idolatry ; with all my ivorldly goods I thee endow, a 
lie ; — the man knowing, instead of imparting his own 
riches, he will at once seize his wife's. In the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : 
that, let me add, is blasphemy, to associate the sacred 
adjuration with earthly stuff; and some have refused 
to repeat at their marriage that part of the vow. 

Is not constancy of one to one the inward bidding? 
In Beethoven's " Ruins of Athens" a martial band re- 
cedes with music, throb after throb, in every fainter 
sound, till it slips at last over some hill-side and is no 
longer heard. So, unheeded, at length inaudible in the 
distance, goes the angelic troop. Let us make the still 
place in us, and we shall hear ! Sometimes we are at 
the secret door, and look into the celestial window, 
with vision of beauty and voice of truth, when some 
sceptic opens his carnal lips to call the doctrine of the 
Spirit delusion : there is none, or but a painted window 
or door ! But it is no error to affirm the Spirit's teach- 
ing ; only to claim it as our word. If it be mistake, 
so are we all mistakes ; even the soul itself a mistake. 

It is one thing to question the purity of the advo- 
cates of transferable affections ; another to deny the 
purity of the transfer ; as would a jury of women, from 
the concubines of Solomon and the seraglios of the 



138 THE RISING FAITH. 

Turk, to the anachronisms of Brigham Young. Na- 
ture resents the lion's share of affectional privilege, 
and pleads for home. When the sparrows on the trees 
find ready-made the small houses of painted wood to 
shelter them better than any nests from the sun and 
wind ; must they not have, in their slender breasts, 
some dream of the merciful power, above their own, 
that has fashioned and bestowed the refuge, wiierein — 
with free rental and no warning to quit — more del- 
icate feelings may unfold than if they were ruffled by 
the storm or blown about in the exposed hollows of 
sticks and straw which alone they could build for them- 
selves? So what supernal goodness substitutes the 
human household for the wild perils and loose wander- 
ings of savage life ! Scream as we may at the bad, 
the good prevails. Spite of foul tramplings, and 
ordure in the streets, there cannot be of mud so much 
as of pure air ; and misunderstanding is part of the 
purifying plan. Nice work asks sharp tools ; and there 
is no measure in the keenness of those with which our 
character is cut and carved. Ify workmanship, silver 
has a price beyond gold, and wood is wrought into 
more value than rubies. Into what maj r not the vilest 
substance of our nature be shaped, if we hark to the 
teaching and yield to the hand ? In Goethe's drama, 
Iphigenia defends her chastity, ascribing her firmness 
to the gods. No god hath said this ; thine own heart 
hath spoken, answers Thoas the king. Thej' only 
speak to us through our heart, she replies. Have 
not I the right to hear them too? he rejoins. Thy 
storm of passion drowns the gentle whisper, adds the 
maiden, and closes all debate. 



sex. 139 

But can the affections submit to the will ? As when 
I hear music or eloquence, so when I see grace and 
beauty, can I help being drawn ? Doubtless there is a 
charm betwixt particular persons of sex, which no hu- 
man ordinance, other relation or previous ownership of 
supposed property can disallow. It is an education for 
Petrarch and Dante, and for thousands beside, which 
no college could afford. It is no weapon, but a shield. 
No outward intimacy is its aim. It moves with the 
respect Mars or Jupiter has for his sister planet. It 
holds a gracious distance and keeps a heavenly har- 
mony. There is no end or bound to its anticipation of 
joy. To its surety a promise seems profanation ; and 
thanks but rising dust. To bar it out is to resist our 
Maker and our make ; to scorn it is to laugh at the 
Hol} r Spirit ; and to restrict its love or aim to external 
lines of posterity, is to discard the divine image and 
deny immortality. But unlimited liberty of a fleshly 
bond is such secession and nullification of a deeper 
than any civil order that with it no state or society 
could exist. 

We have an account open which we need better to 
understand. " Limits of Human Responsibility" for 
the title of a book ? We have not found them ; and 
the}^ must be extended farther yet. God is the Former 
of our bodies and Father of our souls ; but we are cre- 
ators too. The tools, that tunnel the hills, are more 
admirable than the rocks and earth they displace ; the 
ship and engine nobler than the water}^ waste they cut ; 
the picture from the hand of genius has a value beyond 
the landscape, in the inspiration of the artist's touch ; 
Lafarge's lily is handsomer than any in the pond, being 



140 THE RISING FAITH. 

the type no individual flower can match ; and the road 
humanizes the pasture or forest through which it is 
made. No field in France conveys the suggestion of 
Millet's picture of the " Sower " which threatened a rev- 
olution. But we are self-creators too ; and must not 
father or shoulder off the miserable specimens of our 
humanity on God. We have a hand with him in our 
kind. " God made me," said the little negro, " but 
Massa Lincum make me free." But how we botch his 
work in our offspring, as if human creatures did not 
choose the multiplication of their own sordid sort, as 
much as of the scrubs and brambles at their door ! 
Great sculptors leave their works to be finished by in- 
feriors ; but what poor apprentices we are ! I think I 
see the Lord washing his hands of us ! Jesus was his 
Son ; but what courtesy to call this common brood his 
children ! " Blessings of Providence " ? Grim humor 
in the grand phrase ! 

" Stuff their nine brains into this hat! 
Give their nine lives to this cat ! " 

God answers somehow for all that is ; but what is God ? 
Not only Being, but better Becoming. We must rise 
and go on to keep up with him. 

" Thy sandals seize, gird on thy clothes, 
Or I must leave thee here behind." 

Not God's children, but Satan's, invite a new flood that 
would cover the highest hills of our civilization. For 
the human product be on guard ! When distress and 
danger came with birth of children, a husband said his 
wife should bear no more ! I am not of their mind 



SEX. 141 

whose humanity is their onty deity. But the opinion 
is more hazardous which blinds us to the fact of self- 
transmission as our task ; and there is no safety in 
abjuring, for this office, some decent ordinance and 
rule. Give the woman perfect freedom ; and, with her 
greater native delicacy, will she submit to no ill ? To 
such possible safeguard all-hail ! But it is no exper- 
iment untried. To what, in or out of wedlock, with 
right to her own person or not, does she not submit 
and consent, generous of nothing so much, and often 
so falsely, as herself? Would that for her sake and 
ours, in the trial-balance, she could appear as never 
misleader, but always misled ! But she determines the 
issue, fair or foul, hardly less than her permanent or 
shifting mate. I saw the simple awkward boy stand- 
ing to be gazed at by the comely girl older than him- 
self. Part with wilful power and part unconscious 
influence flowed into him the magnetic current from 
her half-shut gleaming eyes. The artillery would have 
played harmless on another ; but who could divert the 
aim? 

"Half sank he in ; half drew she him." 

It will be salvation when by what we call Sex, its mis- 
sion is fulfilled. 



VL 

TEACHING. 

AS the Greek word for teaching is the same with 
that for child ; and the modern writer who said, 
better one be not born than not taught, no doubt accepted 
this double sense : so in the nature of childhood the 
quality of instruction is involved. In the same old 
meaning the child was a subject, and the son a servant, 
and learning was obeying .too ; not limited, as with the 
moderns in the multiplication of studies, to one branch 
or to one faculty in the subdivision of the mind, but 
taking for its province every topic and the entire soul. 
Moreover this secondary significance, that youth should 
yield as well as understand, implied it did not arrive- 
perfect and right, pure as white paper, or to open as a 
flower ; but needed tutoring. The child was a patient, 
bringing disorder if not depravity, with it. Every man, 
says the medical proverb, is born with the disease he 
dies of: with a physical tendency, which is spiritual 
too, to error and ill ; and, as the prime skill of the 
physician is to know what is the matter, eveiy teacher 
should be acquainted with the constitution of every 
child in his charge. TThat is doctor but healer ; and 
such, as well as expounder, is his office, be he doctor 
(U2) 



TEACHING. 143 

of medicine, theology or laws. He prescribes ; and 
his lessons are compounds or specifics for the health 
and life of whoso he visits in his rounds, adapting his 
skill to every case. While a complex civilization leads 
into so many specialties of art and accomplishment, 
and some dexterous manipulation may fetch fortune 
and fame, and one is considered educated who can 
handle the tools of a profession, though not grounded 
in knowledge ; and universities send forth graduates 
who have but a tongue, a trick or scientific knack ; it 
is well to recur to fundamental principles. Yet no 
philosophy or religion has yet carried us beyond the 
old heathen as well as Christian conception of parent 
and child. Peter and John, driven out by the Sanhe- 
drim, and moved to articulate the spirit of truth in one 
voice — for Luke, the narrator, says they spoke to- 
gether — could find no term for their master in their 
prayer, but Thy holy child Jesus. 

But why this term so strangely applied to a man full 
grown — the man of men, the greatest manhood in 
history — after he had finished his course, was dead, 
risen, and gone to glory? What is a child but one 
just out of the womb or the cradle ; at least still 
young and small and undeveloped ? It is the offspring 
of human parents : is it yet a child of God ? No, it is 
not in itself child in any sense. The child is one in 
whom the filial consciousness has waked to recognize a 
relation to a father and mother. What does that little 
soft lump know of what you are to him ; of the tender 
affections that grew betwixt the 3^oung man and maiden, 
and had their issue in betrothal and marriage ; of 
the love that was born before a true son or daughter 



144 THE RISING FAITH. 

could be ; or of the sacred yearnings rooted in the 
past and branching into futurity, that make a blessed 
family? When presently the little creature can not 
only suck and cling and cry and lie in its crib and 
begin to creep, but makes some response of a fond 
look with a smile or a kiss, will salute your friend who 
comes to see you, gets to be cunning, as we say, and 
seems dimly to conceive who it is to you and you to it, 
how proud and pleased you are ! Yet it is not aware 
of the bond, cannot love as you do, and will not till it 
becomes a parent. Parents are perfectly loved only 
through the grave, across the earthly horizon, in 
heaven. As the rolling moon draws the Atlantic, 
how the tide of emotion rises and heaps at the sepul- 
chre, and goes flowing far into the unseen ! Who 
wants them back to sight, when away they are dearer 
than ever before? The imagination of a father is 
more than his presence ; the menuny of a mother 
more than a mother could be. The deep and lively 
compunction for the failures of duty to them we can- 
not forget. The thanks are loud in the heart for their 
fidelity and patience, when their mortal sense is shut. 
But they must hear the tardy acknowledgments ! We, 
gray-headed men and women, are children at last of 
those that begot and bore us. 

Are we, however, even yet children of God? Not 
unless we have that sense of a tie with that Infinite 
Spirit we are part of, which is how late and long in 
unfolding ! You are his child when nothing comes 
between to dispute his claim, and the earthly instru- 
ments of your being but express that thought of his 
which you and they were made by. Then you are 



TEACHING. 145 

young with immortal youth, have an insurance no 
company can furnish against death, and shall never 
grow old. The oldest angels, says Swedenborg, are 
the youngest. They have the most freshness of feel- 
ing, zeal of enterprise, and simplicity of purpose. 
What is childhood, or what is age? Is that slight 
organism, that has just begun to breathe and wail, or 
laugh and crow, a child? Has it just commenced? 
Xo : it is very ancient, born old. It is a delegate from 
other lands. It is a representative of ages, and con- 
tinuation of creatures before the Flood. All its ances- 
try are rolled up smooth and small in that fine bundle 
you bear and nurse and rock to sleep. Very ancient 
dispositions slumber in that weak bosom, and will 
soon mightily arouse. I have a friend, who took a 
child to adopt and rear, on the theory that all children 
are as white paper, born free and equal and completely 
pure ; and that all in the character to come depends on 
education, circumstance, and surrounding influence. 
She had to modify her religious philosophy before she 
got through ! Our Declaration of Independence is a 
glittering generality, or blazing ubiquity, true only in 
some legal sense of just and impartial treatment of 
every citizen and human soul. What more unequal or 
more bound than those babes ? What is that partic- 
ular infant, you for good reason so especially prize, but 
a mass of impulses and inclinations, the bequest and 
heir-loom to it of the immemorial human race — to say 
nought of pre- Adamite tribes — in the line of its 
descent ? Will it be the heir of your property ? It is 
the heir of your temper ! Your inclinations slumber in 
the cradle of its brain. How often the anger, avarice, 
10 



146 THE RISING FAITH. 

lust, pride, as well as good affections of its progenitors, 
are ready, at a touch of temptation or encouragement, 
to start, as a seed in due season sprouts and manifests 
itself after its kind ! Do we not have the bitter tansy, 
smart mustard, deadly nightshade, poisonous ivy, 
fragrant apple-blossom, sweet, lowly lily of the valley, 
— all within an hour's walk ? O my friend ! I see your 
mother's eyes in you : I am sure also of your mother's 
good-will. I trust you as I did her. Does it not look 
like its grandfather ? Its grandfather it is, come again, 
as the Jews said the new prophet was but some old 
one, — Elias returned. Did the grandfather drink, 
defraud, sit long at table, lie late in bed, make ven- 
tures of speculation, follow the flesh? Look out the 
grandchild do not the same ! Beware the power of 
hereditary tendency ! Watch the stream, from the 
past, you and yours are borne on, and like some pre- 
decessor may be wrecked in, unless you navigate with 
care ! What is your baby ? A chip of the old block ! 
Hew and smooth it into some form of grace and vessel 
of honor. 

When Calvinism ran into such extremes as infant 
damnation and paving hell with infant bones, we met 
the blasphemy with every creature's divine origin and 
claim. Wordsworth wrote his wonderful poem to 
glorify the child : 

" Thou, whose exterior semblance doth bely 
Thy soul's immensity." 

But the Liberals went into extravagance the other way. 
So there is a weakness in our whole system of training. 
We have looked at the cherubs in Raphael's and 



TEACHING. 147 

Murillo's pictures ; we have gazed at the figure of the 
blessed babe on the canvas of Correggio ; we have 
written our essays and stories on the ground of this 
native innocency, resenting the indictments of human 
nature in the old theology. What sentimental lessons 
we give to the children in our Sunday-schools ; what 
sentimental hymns we sing, and sentimental tales we 
write in our newspapers and magazines ! How we 
spoil the little ones with this seraphic self-conscious- 
ness we nurture them into from the earliest 3-ears ! 
We are surprised when, in some uncleanness, spiteful- 
ness, greed, cruelty, forger}^, an unangelic nature is 
manifest ; and, by the demons our cherubim have 
turned into, our painstaking has proved fruitless, and 
our fine philosophy belied. The Orthodox are half 
right, and we half wrong. It is time this flattery 
ceased, and a wholesome breeze blew in at the win- 
dows of our nice vestries, to sweep away our fond 
foil}' , and startle us with the truth that, if we are 
kindred with God and He is responsible for us, we 
are put at school on trial, with a law of retribution 
for misconduct, as of benediction for faithful work. 

A divine childhood is the perfection of man. But 
it is no possession by inheritance. It is an acquisi- 
tion of time and toil, the hard earning which home 
culture, church instruction, and youthful docility must 
combine to secure. All serene ! cries the Spanish sen- 
tinel, walking the rounds in the city of the Holy Cross in 
the island of Teneriffe. But the sound of the syllables 
implies that lurking robbery, murder, or the incendiary's 
torch, may at any moment appear from ambush, with a 
blow or flash, on the scene. We must stand guard and 



148 THE RISING FAITH. 

pace the walls of this human city of God, knowing that 
only on condition of our watching against evil will good 
prevail. Only right generation can dispense with re- 
generation. Our children, in their moral nonage and 
minority, are our copies and echoes. They are we over 
again till they become, by our care and their own, 
themselves. Knowing our weakness and sins, and how 
far in God's eye we have been from entire rectitude, 
we are to provide defences against their repetition of 
our mistakes, and lead them to a new departure of right. 
They are not persons till they have worked the most 
ancient clay out of their composition. Are your pos- 
terity to belike you? What will you be like? "In- 
crease and multiply," said the primeval command. 
But what? The thorns and thistles, or the grapes and 
figs? If there be inducement to an unspotted life, a 
motive that wickedness cannot resist, it is the coming 
out of your loins in endless succession, while the world 
shall stand, of the unfailing resemblances of 3-our char- 
acter and will. Must not all the attributes of child- 
hood, — love as aught more than fondling ; trust nobler 
than that of a kitten or chick ; learning with a thirst 
for knowledge beyond superficial curiosity ; and gen- 
uine simplicity above mere freedom from bad design, — 
in the first bare miscellany of caprices and whims, be 
acquired ? 

I look not back after my childhood, but forward ! I 
feel it as something to reach, not to leave. O j'oung 
people, these hoary and wrinkled ones, your elders, 
smile at your esteeming them so old ! Some very 
young folks I consider much older than I am. I see 
them practising old errors of which I fancy I am rid. 



TEACHING. 149 

Some young, very conservative ministers seem to me 
like antiquarians — veritable voices of antiquity — older 
than Pharaoh ; and, though I am a score of years in 
advance, I cannot resist the impression they were 
somehow born before I was. Not 'the number of the 
earth's revolutions, since jou dropped on it, measures 
your age. There is, as the heathens fabled, an elixir 
of life, a fountain of immortal youth. Every prejudice 
you throw off renews your age, till you are more a 
child in 3'our " Father's house" of " many mansions" 
than you were in your spring-time or college days. 
Every conquest of passion is rejuvenation. I confess 
I did not feel very young when I was a bo}\ I fell 
into a gloomy epoch in religion. I bore the weight of 
the world's iniquity, all the way from Adam, on my 
little shoulders. God seemed to me not a perpetual 
original and presence of joy, not one who created the 
world ; but one who made Sunday, and built the 
church, and settled the minister, and would punish 
little boys that walked out into the pasture and picked 
flowers in the garden when anybody was preaching. 
When women fainted in church, I thought they were 
called to the judgment. I walked about, hanging down 
my head, saying over and over again, hour after hour, 
God be merciful to me a sinner! I knew not what sin 
was ; was not conscious of having committed any ; but 
was oppressed with an imagination of evil, which 
stained and cumbered the earth, and on which the sun 
was weary of his business of shining, and the grave 
gaped to swallow it up. How sad sickness was ! 
What a calamity death ! The churchyard a horror, 
and the heavy black crape worn for departed friends 



150 THE RISING FAITH. 

clothed the universe in mourning. Hung be the heavens 
in black! writes Shakespeare. To me, they were. 
The color strikes a chill to my heart through all this 
distance of miles and years. But the feeling of age 
in youth, from all this mysterious theological misery, 
I remember so vividly, it seems to me I have grown 
younger ever since, the world fresher. The sun gets 
up blithe and cheerful now ; not as a melancholy sen- 
tinel to watch the wickedness of every man, and be 
God's flaming eye to portend wrath. 

Give your children a cheerful religion. Teach them 
God is love ; but not that they are perfect, or began as 
accomplished saints. Their nature is but the material 
of character. They have an immense work to do, and 
we on them and with them. Any self-complacent 
notion, such as we liberal Unitarians are apt to nourish, 
that, by the attributes of animal childhood, they have any 
advantage or beauty over their seniors, is falsehood and 
ruin. Where, but in our religious misconceptions and 
injudicious instructions, is the root of intolerable vanity 
and conceit in our girls and boys, as if they did not 
get nonsense enough from us in the blood, without our 
taking pains to nurse it ! I know a little boy who rules 
the house with a rod of iron. Father, mother, grand- 
mother, as well as cook and waiters, are his tools. 
Queen Victoria or the new Emperor William, dreaming 
to exercise such tyranny, would not be endured for a 
moment in parliament or camp. The monarch of all 
he surveys is who but this fellow, that has what he 
wants? He takes what he wishes, and breaks what 
he can lay his hands on. If flowers are brought in 
and presented to the lady, he seizes them for his own. 



TEACHING. 151 

He drags everybody, or turns the cold shoulder, as he 
will. He screams and yells, as if he would split the 
roof-tree, at any denial, till whoever opposes him has, 
like the animal Colonel Crockett covered with his rifle, to 
come down and yield the point. He takes the handsome 
articles from the shelf to wheel through the dirt in his 
barrow ; for his mother says, Nothing is too good for 
him. He is told to his face how beautiful he is ; and 
when he refuses to greet a visitor, and shrugs and turns 
away with scorn, his father says, " I am treated just 
the same : half the time he won't have anything to do 
with me." This is the idol of the family, bowed down 
to and worshipped, — a little god, O false devotees, 
that has your heart and honor more than the Great One. 
How long before he will be a true child ! How far 
his youth is before him ! What trouble by such unwise 
indulgence is laid up in store for him ; and how the 
needful discipline, now withheld, will come sharper in 
many a curb from his fellow-creatures, and in provi- 
dential pain ! 

I do not say, then, with Richter's dreamer, Give me 
back my youth, that wilful, undisciplined thing. My 
youth shines before me. I come from the west ; I 
travel to the east. I do not think young people are 
always respectful to us ! The president of a religious 
association, calling on me to speak, said, by way of 
compliment, he did not like to think of me as ever 
to grow old. I could have told him I had been growing 
young for fifty years. More glory in the grass and 
splendor in the flower every spring. The brightest 
hour of boyhood was when my father took me out of 
the prison of the parlor on Sunday afternoon, to a hill- 



152 THE RISING FAITH. 

top, with his spy-glass, to look off on the sea. But 
I feel in no prison now. Was not Father Cleveland, for 
whose hundredth birthday Boston prayed, young as any 
child in his straw chariot ? 

Thy holy child Jesus, Holiness generates and con- 
stitutes childhood. Not bright cheeks and fine hair 
make it, but humility, reverence, obedience. I love 
children. I have all the fondness for them God will 
allow or pardon. But most of the true children, whom 
I know, have lived long, yet not passed their prime. 
Jesus was more child in his mortality than when he 
was born in pain at Bethany, sought and adored by 
the wise men from the East, borne by Joseph -into 
Eg} r pt, or disputing with the doctors at Jerusalem. 
What lovely and noble children of God we have known 
in what we ignorantly call the decline of life, when it 
is but such a slope as that Alpine one you may have 
gone down, into a sunn}', blossoming, and fruitful land, 
more pleasant and abounding than was ever known 
before ! I remember plunging from the pass of the 
Stelvio into Italy ; in an hour or two, from the precip- 
itous region of frost and death, reaching the sunny and 
grassy plain. So only our revered and beloved ones 
have gone down, not into the tomb, but into delight- 
some scenes it might unfit us for our remaining tasks 
to have unveiled ; so I covet not the manifestations. 

They are children still. No young man or maiden, 
no lowly and respectful son or daughter, is more a 
child, can be one so much in simplicity, candor, warm 
and unobtrusive love, as some at fourscore ; no misses 
of fourteen more free from forwardness and pretence. 
Of the arrogance and exaction it grieves us to notice 



TEACHING. 153 

in our juniors, there is in their gracious dignity no 
trace. The}' make no claim, and would hardly knock 
at the door of heaven ! But that is a door which opens 
to the faithful without being touched. Well-preserved 
do we say ? Duty is the life-preserver. It makes their 
faces clear as an infant's asleep, in their shrouds. The 
silver cord is loosed for them, the golden bowl broken, 
the pitcher broken at the fountain and the wheel broken 
at the cistern ; the dust goes to the dust ; but that which 
is neither cord nor bowl, neither pitcher nor wheel, nor 
any manner of dust, goes unto God who gave it. What 
is any monument to the advancing soul? It lives in 
the future : it leaves the past. It recollects not itself, 
and would not have us recollect it. In ecstas} r of 
faith, hope, and communion, eternity is present : time 
disappears. Even remembrance, so delightful to us, 
fades before the morning glory we speed on to. We 
have no memory because God has none. 

Such childhood is never life's commencement, but its 
last attainment. To use the Greek idiom, it is the 
childing of the soul. It was the childish things, not 
the child-like, that Paul put away when he became a 
man ; for all greatness and goodness must have the 
filial trait. The simple Newton describes himself in 
his splendid discoveries as a child picking up pebbles 
on the shore, with the heaving main of truth stretching 
aw a}' boundless and unseen. 

" Sweetest Shakespeare, Nature's child, 
Warbled his native wood-notes wild ; " 

and, were there not intellectual argument enough against 
Lord Bacon's having written the matchless pla}'S, there 



154 THE RISING FAITH. 

were fatal disquarh^ing in the low cunning of that 
politic man ; for the real composer must have been one 
of those, not wise or might}', in the world or their own 
esteem, of whom the apostle sa}-s were the elect. 

" So she keeps him still a child 
And will not let him go ! " 

The lines will fit all supreme merit of naturalist or mor- 
alist ; a philosopher like Spinoza, a sage like Socrates, 
a saint like Fenelon or a lover like John ; and the mas- 
ters of arts, who bring about their ends by trick and 
deceit, in private or public affairs, are monsters of arti- 
fice, a brood threatening to the land more mischief than 
ever did its old inhabitants of wolves and bears. In- 
dividuals, very able in party-management and parlia- 
mentary debate, who contrive to be prominent, to effect 
the passage of large measures, good or bad, in State or 
Congressional halls, and have great weight in adminis- 
tration or opposition scales, ma}' yet be far from being 
either children or true men. 

But the Lord has ways to make the wisest in their 
own conceit children again, and turn to a benediction 
of knowledge that proverb for decrepid folly, — once a 
man, twice a child. One of his tools of pain, a fit 
of sickness, a sharp disappointment, a wasting grief, 
will cut and mould us as infants in arms once more. 
Then all our wiles drop like the fashions of our hand- 
some or stately dress, to reveal our genuine shape and 
temper, as the pen-sketch of Thackeray shows the form 
of the French monarch with and without his insignia of 
honor and regal robes. To one who has trod the brink 
of the grave and felt its sandy edge give way under his 



TEACHING. 155 

feet, to one for whom the boon of life has been in the 
scales overweighed b}~ distress, to one who has tasted 
the cup containing not gall, but treachery, overreaching 
ceases to be prudential and the knave becomes the fool. 

God, he will say, let me cheat and equivocate no 
more ! All I had or am in this world was in pawn. But 

1 have redeemed my perjured or spendthrift life. On the 
verge of ruin, I have from the just Judge and mighty 
Disposer bought my forfeited existence back. 

" And in the light of truth 
Thy bondman let me live," 

is not to any abstract Duty my prayer. Out of chasten- 
ings sore and terrible, childhood is the lesson I have 
learnt, with graduation beyond all that first innocency 
knew. Sacred poetiy errs not, speaking of 

1 -The Eternal Child." 

It is no individual man, but the soul from which all 
that is manly and womanly is a twofold branch. In an 
instinct of dependency or derivation, German mystic 
and American dogmatist alike make piety to consist. 
TVe are children of that from which our quality is 
drawn. So by a metaphor we st}~le one of bright 
warm temperament a child of the sun. They were 
"sons of thunder" who would call down fire from 
heaven, and the devil was father of those who would 
lie and bewray ; while even the Pharisees' indignant 
claim, out of that shameful brand, of God as the real 
parent is the spirit in every breast affirming its own 
nature, origin, and end. Are we part of that we spring 



156 THE RISING FAITH. 

from? So far dependence is lost in communion, and 
trust becomes assurance. In conscious identity with 
deity we cannot conceive of death, or experience degen- 
eracy, or be in any state diverse from peace ; for the 
parent shares every privilege with the child. 



VII. 

TEAINING. 

THE impossibilit}' of reducing to unity all qualities 
suggests for our culture a certain balance. Not 
too much is the Latin motto ; not overdo or o'erstep 
the modest}' of nature, Hamlet's advice to the players. 
If all be the same as ever, as Hebrew sceptics said, 
and will be the same a thousand }'ears hence and there 
is nothing new under the sun, 3'et all is change, evolu- 
tion the wheel that never stops, development the blos- 
som never in full bloom. No individual Jesus, but 
Difference, is that Son of God which is of eternal gen- 
eration, and of which no metaphysics can give any 
account. So our wisdom is to avoid excess or defect, 
and preserve the air, yet please with the variations of the 
tune we play. Every motion of body or mind is to 
trim the boat ; and nothing within our reach is absolute. 
It is always a question of more or less, and an impres- 
sion grows that we have taught inordinately, and not 
trained enough. We have neglected the material part in 
favor of the intellectual, and at the cost of the whole. 
We admit the gymnastic, not like the Greeks as edu- 
cation, only as exercise and recreation for the new 
mental tasks alone considered worthy an immortal soul. 
(157) 



158 THE RISING FAITH. 

Base-ball is a nuisance to annoy the passers and hurt 
real estate. But physiology is informing us that the 
entire man or woman, of which the boy or girl is the 
bud, is the subject in hand, and the object a perfect 
physical as well as spiritual frame, while a class of 
political and moral monsters that infest the market and 
senate to mortify honest merchants and honorable men, 
hint the importance of moral as well as logical lessons 
in our colleges and schools. 

But how lead this human nature ? Learning to speak 
in different dialects disputes the palm with science as 
a method, and is thought b} r Max Miiller and other 
philologists, to be the impassable boundar} r between 
man and beast, though it is a question if the dog, horse, 
monkey, parrot, do not take the sense of some words 
beside the sound of their own names, which they 
recognize when their back is turned. How far they 
discriminate and classif\ r , it is impossible to say. " If 
a pig could say, I am a pig, he would be a man." 
What germ of humanity is in a brute, biology may 
some day decide ; meantime human genius is shown 
less in the number of tongues spoken, living or dead, 
than by proficiency in the natural language understood 
so largely by the brute, and used by the actor on the 
stage. We run into such diffuse writing and talk, the 
point now is to reduce the number of vocables, and 
have " more matter and less art." The ringing in the 
belfry makes me more religious than the sermon in 
church, and the music of the choir is more touching 
than the verses the} r sing. A venerable clergyman, 
being deputed by his brethren to thank Madam Sontag 
for her free concert, prayed that when her time came to 



TRAINING. 159 

go, she might sing more sweetly if possible in heaven. 
We shall not be able to carry Bible or hymn-book 
thither.; perhaps mortified that we cannot pick up a 
w T orcl of English or French, or remember the sectarian 
terms in which we now contend ; some new language 
displacing all the old ones on which an oblivion will fall 
more fatal than the old confusion of tongues. But 
w T e shall utter, somehow, the universal language of love, 
comprehended by the bird that hops after the crumbs, 
and the fishes that come in the pond to be fed. How 
ashamed will be contentious theologians who cannot 
any longer denominate God or Christ, or angels as 
they did, nothing left of the Babel they so labori- 
ously built. Let us begin with our children the only 
conversation we can contine ! 

Industrial Education hints an idea holding, more 
than an} T other, our future destiny. I remember when 
a boy how the great kite, I flew, pulled so hard I had 
to be spelled by my playmate ; and this idea now 
draws upon a thousand heart-strings. But the flaming 
sword, that turned man out of Eden to till the thorny 
field, has bequeathed such a prejudice against labor 
that one of its champions has said it cannot now be 
elevated into a sentiment. Still sticks the Eastern 
contempt of matter as something God would not soil 
his hands with ; and so, like an artist with apprentices, 
he employed demons to make the world. The Prussian 
instruction is mainly a soldier's drill ; and our civil- 
ization will be barbarism on system, a polish on the 
weapons of war, till everybody is taught some art of 
peace. If Adam and Eve fell when they had to work, 
whoever enriches not the earth falls lower than they or 



160 THE RISING FAITH. 

their children ; for Cain was at least a tiller of the 
ground and Abel a keeper of sheep. Yet how we mis- 
interpret as pure spirit the image we are made in ! 
But God has a hand as well as a mind. His hand is 
that infinite executiveness, of which ours is a little 
figure, ever at his Sabbathless work ; and the Greeks 
well expressed action rather than reflection in the head 
of the Phidian Jove. Is the brain, in our scholastic 
expression, the organ of the mind? We are learning 
that the mind is in every nerve and fibre, as God is in 
all nature, the great coat which grows out of him, and 
he cannot shake off. We well say grasp of a subject ; 
for speculation is but heat-lightning, and eloquence an 
aurora, aside from the actual world. 

What an amazing elastic complexity is the hoof of a 
horse striking the ground and rebounding with the 
weight, in a moment, of a ton ! But more marvellous 
the hand, half whose wonders Dr. Bell did not tell. 
Man's superiority to the beast is not in his cerebral 
convolutions alone, but this shaping of the fifth finger 
as an opposing thumb, for numberless combinations of 
delicacy and strength, on which hang all the art and 
architecture of the globe. Of the magic of these meet- 
ing flesh-balls, Signor Blitz gives in his legerdemain 
but a sign. What are all our religion and government 
but things handed down ? Christianity is a tradition 
which we should have heard only a faint rumor of, save 
for the recorder's hand. Think what it performs in 
the service of. the soul! Michael Angelo, making the 
chips fly from the marble in his zeal ; Ole Bull, with 
his fingers plucking out harmony as he stoops like 
a hawk over his violin ; William Hunt, when his 



TRAINING. 161 

brush will no longer serve to get close enough to his 
canvas, rubbing in the color with what his pupils call 
his wonderful thumb, are witnesses as well as every 
driver, rock-blaster, cabinet-maker, or engineer. Could 
we have had Raphael, all he was in soul without hands? 
No, said one ; Raphael was the result of his hands ! 
Napoleon called his army his extended hand. Arm is 
the simple stroke ; army the compound battery. In the 
old rhetoric explanation was the expanded, demonstra- 
tion the closed hand or fist. There are faculties, of 
weight, size, form, which can be exercised onty through 
the hand. The properties of matter it assists the eye to 
discover. Its culture makes the artist. I can see 
what he wants, but I cannot do it. On what delicate 
shadings depends a Dresden Madonna for its differ- 
ence from a daub ! What at first painstaking and at 
last spontaneous graduation of speed and pressure 
distinguishes Listz or Joachim from one that pounds 
the piano or scrapes with his bow ! How, but in nicety 
of touch, is a vase or vessel of Benvenuto Cellini di- 
verse from the blacksmith's horse-shoe or nail? More 
complex convolutions are behind in the cunning artisan's 
brain, but they are deepened and refined by his. expert 
hand, so inspired he often knows not how it acts. The 
hand is given in marriage and lifted for an oath, and is 
one-half of eloquence. An Italian in Milan, whose 
voluble speech I could not catch, guided me by a swift 
play of gesture through a labyrinth of streets. Goethe's 
Ottilia, clasping her hands to her breast* and turning 
them bent slightly outwards, signifies a renuncia- 
tion her lover could not resist, Amputation of the 
hand locks up mental power ; an armless man is 
11 



1G2 THE RISING FAITH. 

doomed to perpetual imprisonment. A soldier taken 
in Cromwell's wars was found to have tired his piece 
with a bit of crooked iron tied to his stump of a wrist, — 
probably the first man that fought on his own hook. 
When the babe's eye opens things touch it ; the infant 
learns distance by feeling it out, makes a mud-pie, and 
afterwards a picture or park. 

This is not materialism. We feel that the muscles 
are tools. I am sensible that some dress is needful to 
my existence, yet suspect I am not confined to an3 r , 
but can slip off a gravestone as eas}- as a morning- 
gown. Man is proteus, with many masks, or sets of 
colors in his locker. Was it necessary to detail an 
angel to roll away the stone before Jesus could get 
out ? He was never under it, but sat somewhere, and 
smiled w T hile Mary wept at Joseph's tomb. Our organ- 
ism does not constitute us ; there is a silent partner in 
the firm, of which the body is the business member 
and travelling agent. A man is not sea-sick while he 
commands the horizon. But the nerve must serve the 
will, for we have not made up our mind till we have 
made up our body. No conception but is improved by 
execution. Beethoven composes better for performing. 
Letters are not a nurse of imagination so good as 
nature. We consider memory a mental process. But 
it is in every fibre. As I resumed gymnastics, after a 
long interval, my teacher said, How vrell you recollect ! 
I answered, The muscles have a memory of their own. 
I attend to nry oars scarce more than to- my lungs, and 
row as easy and unconscious as I breathe. Inventions 
are suggested by and must be verified in things. The 
grandest posture on this continent is not the landing 



TRAINING. 1G3 

of Columbus, or of the Pilgrim Fathers, or throwing 
the tea into Boston Harbor, or signing the Declaration 
of Independence, but Franklin tempting the thunder- 
cloud to prove his electrical suspicion, and making 
every telegraph-wire and ocean-cable the extension of 
his kite-string. Yocal or literary expression gets its 
power from dealing with the actual world. Turning 
my father's grindstone while he held the scythe, walk- 
ing barefoot on the stubble-fields, driving home the 
cows through bolts flashing from the sky and shaking 
the ground was more help to my speech than Primer 
or Bible. Why do some ingenuous thinkers impress us 
so feebly but that only their mouth and not their hand 
is in their oration, while in every sentence of Crom- 
well we feel his sword? 

To know how character in the Commonwealth enforces 
this doctrine we need but think of some names : Wash- 
ington the surveyor, Lincoln the rail-splitter, Clay the 
mill-boy, Webster on the farm, Banks the blacksmith, 
Wilson the shoe-maker, Boutwell the grocer, Grant the 
tanner and teamster, Greeley the printer. Look to 
your laurels, O graduates, lest the mechanics shove }'ou 
from your stools ! Hugh Miller, stone-cutter and 
geologist, Shakespeare going from the play-room to the 
quill, not thinking as he stood in the little Globe- 
theatre to shake the globe ; Mrs. Stowe shaping Uncle 
Tom's Cabin amid her own kitchen-distractions ; Napo- 
leon, when he handled a musket on board the Belle- 
rophon and showed the difference of the French and 
English practice, hinting the steps he rose by, prove 
this partnership of hand and mind. Orators thinking 
on their legs and students finding their ideas in a jolt- 



164 THE RISING FAITH. 

ing-car hint the connection of material with mental 
force. A great preacher said his thoughts came to him 
not in his study-chair, but on a brisk walk, or when he 
took his razor to shave, as if that careful task concen- 
trated to the kindling point his powers. Playing with 
a pencil enables our conceptions to be born. A string 
in the hand promotes the inward crystallization. I 
knew a man, a dull scholar, who, the moment he began 
to handle stocks and certificates, became a great finan- 
cier. Morton, risking murder in his painless extraction 
of the etherized patient's tooth ; Fulton, propelling his 
boat with steam ; Bigelow, inventing not from theor} r , 
but the exigencies of the factory ; Morse, detecting the 
requisite composition of india-rubber after self-sacrific- 
ing experiments, which Forceythe Wilson said put 
Mother Nature out of patience with her secret, and 
forced her to sa}^, at last, Take it, my child ; and our 
other Morse, harnessing the lightning with his wires, 
not to put a girdle, but send a message round the world 
in forty minutes, are illustrators of the same point how 
application reacts to perfect conception. 

But manual cultivation has yet wider bearings on 
every moving question of the day. Take that of 
Woman's Eio-hts. Let her vote : what rig;ht has man 
to say whether she shall or not ? But what is her vote 
worth save as representing herself, her independent 
share in the common weal. Her vote is her value and 
her virtue ; and what are all three but her hand ? A 
hand she has, not to give or throw away, wait for a man 
to take pity on, load with rings, shield from the sun, 
and hide in a glove, or treat with any fashion or relic 
of barbaric decoration, but put to various wonderful 



TRAINING. 165 

use. Why did the woman hanging out clothes in the 
back-yard beg to be excused for her appearance ? The 
sailor, farmer, mason, cabinet-maker, offers no apol- 
ogy ! Was a woman made to be looked at, in a car- 
riage ? Is she a silkworm's residuary legatee ? Shall 
she never learn the little worth of our loud adoration ? 
Said a beaut}' of the once many courtiers kneeling at 
her feet, I have emancipated my slaves ! But where is 
the mistress on a plantation, or in a ball-room, when 
her slaves are gone ? Helpless for, or blushing at her 
own work ? But all human creatures are handsome, 
not idle, but at their stint ; the husbandman in the 
furrow, and the mariner at the main-sheet. I know 
not how I appear preaching ; but I am comely cleaning 
my sidewalk. Production is the test ; to consume more 
than one produces is to steal ; to shirk this law is to 
be dependent, another's tool ; and what does woman's 
subserviency, being a majority of fifty thousand in 
Massachusetts, mean? There is no sentinel of her 
castle but self-support. Less inclined to grossness 
than the stronger sex, she will not sell herself for the 
dollar she can earn. Despise not the acquisitiveness 
which is her refuge ! The education is a curse that 
puts notions into her head and no skill into her hand. 
The poor girl goes to school with the rich, and learns 
to scorn her mother who cannot read, to covet her 
mate's costlier dress, and to steer for means of like 
adornment into temptation in the course of study. 
Taught to create value she would disarm the tempter. 
I admired the hunter, on the St. John's, proudly bearing 
his game away when the steward ridiculed his price, 
and told him to eat it himself ; - and I wish to see every 



166 THE RISING FAITH. 

"woman widely free of man's solicitation or contempt, 
knowing that, if we hold nothing so dear as the instru- 
ment of our pleasure, we hold nothing so cheap at last. 
What my comfort requires commands my money ; and 
education to afford it will be an artillery to sweep 
crime and mendicancy from the street, till petty com- 
merce cover no more beggary ; soap and engravings, 
books and tin pans, cease to be hawked round by 
ragged traders pleading poverty ; the mean merchan- 
dise fall off from our entries ; our door-bells rest from 
the pulls of impertinent and unwelcome supplicants ; 
our ears rest from grinding musicians, and buyer and 
seller meet on the equality of price. For the most 
part we make a false distinction of labor and capital. 
Expert labor is capital, head-power through the hands ; 
and money its creature and tool. Can I lecture, sing, 
write, legislate, cure, or keep accounts? The exchange 
with a millionaire, who may fail, were not in my favor ! 
Any handicraftsman, artisan or editor, is more secure 
than speculator or trader. Women-artists are capital- 
ists. All hail to their Declaration of Independence ! 
But ability not to please only but produce will be their 
Fourth of July ; and power to say No, to whoever 
would take them in charge. A great painter smiled at 
some sketches by girls, and said, Women begin, but 
men go on. Why do they stop, as negroes are said to 
do, in their studies ? Because they look to marriage, 
which a distinguished man said they were made for? 
But they cannot all be married. There are not men 
enough to go round ! A noble woman said : The fact 
is there are too many of us ! Not so, if your talent 
were brought out. But if some relation with man be 



TRAINING. 167 

the indispensable support, sustenance for the bod}' is 
downfall of the soul. The ornament of the family has 
become something else. Mephistopheles counsels Faust 
to win Margaret by leaving a box of jewels in the 
drawer in her chamber. How often has that gem 
bej'ond all price of pearls, that diamond of the first 
water, a woman's honor, so lost its lustre ! A sailor 
on the cape, being asked by a purchased lady, why he 
had refused to take her to row, answered, Because you 
have on you gold enough to sink my boat. Earn your 
own living ; for not to contribute is to rob ; the receiver 
is not only as bad as, but is the thief. Children of the 
rich, making drafts on the accumulations of the past 
to which thej' do not add, are plundering as much as 
did the soldiers at the sack of Delhi. Some young 
women, who listened to this sentiment, said they- never 
should cry to hear the speaker again. They would cry 
for soothing syrup ! They were born, as the Latin 
poet wrote, to devour the fruit. I should be ashamed 
of what I had begot, if it were but to eat an inher- 
itance ! Good for the betrayer not to have been born ? 
The betrayer not of an individual but his kind is the 
non-producer ; and a man's shame to slight his off- 
spring's industrial training. I feel, said one, as if I 
were little of a father, and as if my children were very 
much a part of their mother ! We talk of neglected 
children. Do we know whose and how many? Let 
them strike for freedom, and insult us with their indi- 
viduality, rather than be underlings of our luxury, 
dissipating their minds with unwholesome novels, and 
their bodies at unhealthy tables, and setting base 
examples to be emulated by those in need. When what 



168 THE RISING FAITH. 

one can do, not have done for him, is the badge of 
nobility, will be the new era for every class. Ten 
thousand "Little Wanderers" in Boston? What a 
satire on a Christian society in the name ! Arabs in 
New York, gamins in Paris ? Not for lack of wit ! 
" Shine your shoes?" said a lad flourishing his brush. 
" Shine your own ! " said the gentleman looking from 
his polished boots to the boy's dirty brogans. ".I will, 
sir, if you will pay for it ! " What better might the 
talent not do, that now carries a blacking-pot through 
the street, or thrusts a newspaper in your face, if, in 
Napoleon's proverb, to talent we opened the career? 
But Niagara weaves, and the river of God runs to 
waste. 

Hand-culture will make labor happy. Because igno- 
rant it is a drudge. If intelligent, it will be no more 
content in pulpit or senate than shop or field. Un- 
skilled labor strikes. Nobody will ever walk down my 
stone stairway to the sea with more pleasure than the 
Irishman who laid it, or anchor in the ravine with more 
pleasure than the miners who cleared it. Toil need be 
no slave. We must look at the joiner's or plumber's 
bill before we decide whether capital oppresses labor, 
or labor capital. A carpenter who does one day's work 
in three for fifteen dollars, smokes among the shavings, 
runs off on pleasure-trips, sequesters the refuse lumber, 
and doubles the time of his contracts, has no tyrant to 
employ him if the bills are settled in perfect peace ! It 
is well at least for mechanic as merchant to claim 
dignity for his task. Sometimes he resents your hint 
because he thinks he knows his business better than 
you know what you want. We need a weight of will 



TRAINING. 169 

in this great middle class to break the political, rail- 
way and military ring. Material we want in the com- 
mon mind to found an art-museum, an International, 
not a party, a republic better than Plato's ; and it can 
come only from handi workers. There are two organs 
in the brain, Constructiveness and Destructiveness. 
Onl}' the first can keep the last under. Satan has the 
refusal of an idle hand to pick the lock, wreck and rob 
the train and plot all harm. Its training will put down 
morbid fancies and premature passions, nip ingenuities 
of crime and prevent the secret and solitary as well as 
social vice that rots the constitution in youth. 

Temperance is an office not of law but the hand. No 
wonder, amid this ruin from strong drink, zeal against 
its sale and use is the only fanaticism left ! Make out 
your police-report of offences ; then scrawl drunkenness 
through the list. Have Prohibitory laws, if they will 
prohibit. But is Suppression of Intemperance enough ? 
Do we but drive the disease in ? Does rum suppressed 
break out opium ? Shall law wrench from the German 
his beer, and leave the Yankee his cider, and the fine 
lady her cologne ? Shall we break the glass, and shall 
not the pipe go next ; or where shall a sumptuary law 
stop ? Succeed to shut the dram-shop, quench the dis- 
tillery, forbid the imported liquor ; drink from the 
grape's natural wine-skin ; put, as Father Taylor said, 
all the alcohol in a cave and roll a planet to the door ; 
yet the appetite unslain and unsubdued, an evil angel 
clad in no white raiment, with horrid resurrection from 
the dead will roll the stone away from its sepulchre and 
sit upon it to mock your pains. Sobriety will prevail 
when labor gaining knowledge ceases to be irksome, is 



170 THE RISING FAITH. 

ricl of its ban, loses its load in delight, makes the welkin 
ring with its voice, and is not pushed into extreme 
efforts or excessive hours. It will no more greedily 
crave the smother of brandy my wood-sawyer begged 
instead of the peaches I offered, on a hot day. We 
take the consequences of liberty. What men want they 
will have. Our business is to make them want what is 
good, as the Greek sage said he was temperate because 
he followed his desires. To labor is to pray ; and it 
will be to enjoy, on the arrival of true work with Indus- 
trial Education by the same train. 

Health will be a passenger too. The soul working 
long alone is an active poison, as Novalis said ; too 
few hours of exercise worse than too many. We slight 
this whole shop of tools in our natural frame, and then 
take the loose and rusty machine, it becomes, to the 
gymnasium or lifting-cure to recover its use with super- 
fluous expenditure of power like steam blown to waste 
in the air. I remember Dr. Wayland's benevolent humor 
about races and regattas, skating and jumping to re- 
store one's tone, and the smile with which he would 
cry, Productive Labor, as he came in dripping from his 
garden and orchard to change his dress for his desk. 
Do people, who direct their servants to take out un- 
driven horses, that pine in the barn, for exercise on the 
road, reflect on their own condition? We save ordure 
and cast vitality away. The wild transport of the 
recess, the college-enervation of students from the farm, 
the stretching and yawning, after too much of one pos- 
ture, accent the voice of abused nature. Use of every 
power is the ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. 

Industrial Education bears how directl} 7 on wealth. 



TRAINING. 171 

What a bee-hive it would make the State ! What a 
beaver-dam it did make of Holland, whose work Dar- 
win should quote in proof of animal descent. Social 
science is exploding the sentimental superstition of 
poverty as a boon. There will be no more professors 
of it in the Romish Church ! Riches are bonds to keep 
the peace. But that they were so heavy, what consid- 
erations beside could in more than one crisis, such as 
of the sloop Caroline. North-East boundary, and the 
Alabama Claims, have availed to prevent war with 
England? How instructive the case now of those 
thrifty Russian Meunonites, like the old Quakers beg- 
ging for a home in any land that will exempt them from 
military service, but no nation, save ours, so little expec- 
tant of quarrels or involved in dispute as to dare bid 
them come ! The North was loth to fight because dil- 
igent and prosperous ; the South willing because lazy 
and poor. "Wealth is a stirring and sensitive ant-hill 
for the hoof of battle to crush. England is not the 
coward she is called for waiving once and again her 
light to interfere in Eureopean complications ; rather 
like the traveller in Scott's novel not liking to trust 
Rob Roy near his heavy portmanteau. What spend- 
thrifts are standing armies ! Stop needless leaks, and 
how the cistern of even' public treasury would overflow ! 
The three curses of the South, said a Judge in Georgia, 
are rot-gut whiskey, pork and tobacco ; and how they 
go along with quarrelsome habits and the trailing of 
guns ! Diligence and temperance will banish want and 
woe. The increase of value by skill has been shown 
by the comparative price of a pound of iron as crude 
metal, nails, needles and watch-springs. But what is 



172 THE RISING FAITH. 

added to pigments by the brush ? Turner can make 
his picture worth more than the thing ; merchantable 
when wharf and ship have dropped in dust and deca}-, 
his surface solid and his subject a ruin. Rubens intro- 
duces his wife in a painting into kings' galleries. 
Raphael converts a woman from the street into Ma- 
donna, Mother of God for worship ; and on the cold 
canvas what warm kisses and tender touches in old 
Italian cathedrals I have seen lavished ! The language 
of art is a translation of things. Some philosophers 
say we must think in words ; but, in whatever symbols, 
let us think things ; think the sun, moon, man, woman, 
not those arbitrary terms we converse about them with. 
Verbiage is the fault of our education. We teach a 
child to name a thing in half a dozen languages, ancient 
and modern, before he knows the thing. First the 
thing, then the sign is the logical order, which we re- 
verse. The living creatures passed before Adam and 
he named them ; but we get the names and hunt after 
the living creatures, or suppose we know what we never 
saw. This is the argument for natural science against 
philology and metaphysics, that denominations become 
barren without acquaintance with fact, and vague des- 
ignations wander divorced from experience in our 
speech ; as students go through college and talk of the 
electric fluid without ever feeling the electric shock. 
In the village, children are shut up in a school-room as 
the place where knowledge is caught and confined for 
them to get. Near by is the record of the tremendous 
hammer that has pounded the hills into boulders, peb- 
bles, gravel, sand ; of the old ice-cap, mother earth 
wore on her head for a million j^ears, melting with cli- 



TRAINING. 173 

matic change ; of the sea rolling back from the land 
and pursued by rivers through the hollows it deserts ; 
of cakes of frost as vessels bearing cargoes of stone to 
scatter along the shore ; of the molten trap jutting 
through the granite and the granite again through the 
trap ; of scratches from pre- Adamite avalanches on pri- 
meval rock. But the little human Adam is never taken 
to this show, knows not what a theatre, bigger than his 
little stage with a green curtain, he is always in ; un- 
derstands not the compass and cannot tell the North 
Star. Science doubtless has its superficial technic and 
conceit, as Heine says there are those who fancy they 
know all about the bird because the}' saw the egg-shell 
it came from. Yet its revolt against our scholastic ter- 
minology, as chaffy food, is not without cause ; and it 
is one reason for giving the English language a larger 
place in the classical course, that a thorough study of - 
our mother-tongue will keep us closer to Nature, to 
things and thoughts. 

But are not the scientific explorers materialists ; and 
do we not owe the present irruption of materialism, to 
overwhelm sentiment and enthrone the senses over the 
intuitions, to their inordinate zeal? I answer, it is the 
human senses they employ, that carry an intelligence 
and purpose for which matter cannot account. The 
eye, ear, touch of many a brute are just as quick. But 
of their senses what does beast or bird make? Xo 
plan of creation, classification of objects, notion of 
their own origin or guess at their fate. Despite Kep- 
ler and Columbus, what is the earth to them still but a 
flat surface, a leafy covert, a grazing-grouncl, a fish- 
pond, never so much as Hamlet's " foul and pestilent 



174 THE RISING FAITH. 

congregation of vapors." What to them is gravity, 
magnetism, music? When did the}' see Sirius, send a 
telegraph-despatch, or make up a weather-report? 
They have no conclave of workers, to cut and polish a 
lens to search into space, whose objects they do not 
cling to, nor fear into its bottomless gulf to fall. But 
how much more than all this the human senses do, 
with causality, curiosity, and a conviction of the unity 
of the universe to help ! All hail to the material 
science, whose door of sense opens into spirit, and 
whose mortal steps lead to immortality ; whose resur- 
rection is of no one dead body, Lazarus or Jesus, but 
myriads into loftier forms ; in whose " chariot of fire" 
go up ten thousand Elijahs ; while this earth of clod 
and stone, she flings in our face, dissolves into pure 
force, and becomes an exhaling drop of dew before 
that Immense Determination whence all starts and 
wherein all ends, not to be lost but live forever. 

About destiny wise men will not dispute. Argu- 
ment is fall from grace. I will not put on the power, 
that made me, the slight of a doubt. If we are phan- 
toms, extemporized for this little play, it is phantom 
too. No destiny is no deity ! To priestly inquiry 
after the prospect of his soul, the dying Heine an- 
swered : God will pardon me; that is his business! 
Something more than wanton, even sublime is the 
Bohemian reply from a conception which turned ex- 
treme unction into a sham. With us all, the fearless 
and unselfish moments are moments of faith. At times, 
unselfed, we see the glory that waits ; and, though we lose 
the exaltation, cannot forget that we saw. Meantime, 
as investigation goes on, quarrel abates and the foil}' of 



TRAINING. 175 

exclusiveness appears. Idealist and materialist would 
benefit their congregations by an exchange of pulpits ! 
Browning could preach the best sermon of matter, and 
Huxley of mind. 

But is not hand- work a necessity and curse, of which 
machinery will take the place ? What shall make the 
machine ? It was thought the iron-horse would super- 
sede the dray-horse ; but more are needed and bred 
than before ; and tools seem but to refine and multiply 
the functions of this chief one that fashions them all, 
and has its patent of nobility in its deeds. I heard an 
artist maintain that the hand is the most expressive 
part of the frame. The word Jiandsome hints its 
charm. There is a hand that has in it no heart, that 
is a claw or paw, a flipper or fin, a bit of wet cloth to 
take hold of, a piece of unbaked dough on the cook's 
trencher, a cold, clammy thing we recoil from ; or 
greedy clutch with the heat of sin, which we drop as a 
burning coal. What a scale, from the talon to the horn 
of plenty, in this human palm-leaf! Sometimes it is 
what a knife-shapecl, thin-bladed tool we dare not 
grasp, or like a poisonous thing we shake off, or un- 
clean member, which, white as it may look, we feel 
polluted by ! A woman, who now sings among the 
seraphs, told me she never, from courtesy, had to 
touch a certain man's hand, without going afterwards 
to wash her own ! What is the matter with your hand 
when youth or maiden drops it so quick? Many a 
lad} T 's soft hand gives a less pleasant sensation than 
the laborer's horny one, though hers never had done 
any hard work : so moral is flesh itself. A well-used 
hand is the healer of sin or sorrow. When the bereft 



176 THE RISING FAITH. 

woman asked, What shall I do? Worlz, was the reply. 
Doing is indeed our defence. 

From Industrial Education will come the communit}^ 
There is none now. What we call the community is a 
cage such as the great tamer kept various animals as 
armed neutrals in, naming them the Happy Family. 
Our peace is a truce. Society is a series of planes, 
less united by any circulating element than the plates 
in a galvanic battery. We touch but at points. When 
the noble New-England preacher, who saved California 
to the Union, was referred to in a fashionable circle, 
one said, I never before heard his name. Napoleon 
said, There are cellars in Paris where I am not known, 
and have never been heard of. Go into places out of 
the way, vessels, ship-yards, wharves, railway stations, 
in your undress and without companions, to mix with 
all j^ou meet, and you will have revelations of human 
nature ! Would the omnibus driver, had he known I 
just came from a funeral, not have kept a civil tongue 
in his head? Would the boys I inquired the way of, 
have been so saucy to their own minister ? Did not 
the lad take me from the dusty road so humanely into 
his chaise because he was happy, going to court a girl, 
as he said, and therefore ready to be kind to any com- 
mon creature? Would the carriage-merchant have 
doubted whether he could even tell me his prices, if he 
had suspected my pecuniary responsibility? These 
gulfs between what we call classes are measures of 
sin. By the sharpness of the lines between divers 
orders we may reckon our distance from the perfect 
state. Common education, to create value, will be 
true fellowship. Shall it be compulsory? Why not 



TRAINING. 177 

the republic require competency in the citizen, whose 
mind cannot be unfolded without his hand ? What a 
relish its practice would give to study, while a child 
must have the largest organ of language, Combe or 
Spurzheim ever saw, to care for descriptions of what 
he never beheld and cannot conceive. He that can 
sketch an object with a pencil, understands it better 
than he who but recites all its titles in every tribe 
under the sun ; and Goethe, who knew all, in the 
apprentice-s}'stem in Wilhelm Meister, foreshadowed 
what the German Father-land is first to try. 

But shall we have school-houses combined with 
shops? Perhaps we perceive not in what small com- 
pass the means for modelling, moulding, drawing, 
building, and machine-making ma}' be brought ; or 
what wide scope, to select and sift the talents, we 
should open for choice. Possibly we have yet to learn 
what education is, be}x>nd a series of tasks in sentences 
and mathematical figures. Was Horatio Greenough edu- 
cated, when glued to the bench for a Latin recitation, 
or loth to demonstrate the sum of degrees in a triangle ; 
and not when he picked up a piece of plaster in the 
street to carve the head of a Roman emperor ? A boy, 
who went fifty years ago to fit for college, could not 
take in the Greek grammar, but showed his talent to 
be an engineer as he came home to put a water-wheel 
in every brook. Lead your pupils wherever Nature's 
finger points to the study of things ! Michelet says a 
man always clears his mind by doing something well 
with his hand. The world lies before us, the subject 
of our experiment ; but not a tithe of it touched. Our 
cursory look at anything is not like that of the artist who 
12 



178 THE RISING FAITH. 

proposes to represent it. I knew what mountain meant 
after mounting the Wengern Alp, and what a river was 
when I had followed the course and waded in the bed 
of the Androscoggin. Why not take a lesson from the 
creature we would give one to, so inquisitive not of 
words, but things, wanting to handle everything, from 
dirt and gravel, bugs and worms, to the moon and 
stars ? Candidates for degrees are examined ; let me 
suggest a Board of little boys and girls, such as I took 
in nvy boat, from whose shower of questions about the 
birds, crabs, sea-weed, gray rats that ran from the stone- 
wharf, or green stems that grew from the crevice, I 
went back to read nry book of philosophy and write my 
sermon with a sense of relief ! But we say Hush ! lit- 
tle people should be seen and not heard, with a sort of 
soul-murder quenching the spirit of curiosity, when 
their queries put our acquisitions of knowledge or char- 
acter to the test. So the}' grow up after and like us, 
without chemistiy enough to cook a meal, or skill to 
row a boat or harness a horse in haste for the doctor, 
or knowledge to restore one from fainting or hold the 
blood in an artery, or suck poison from the bite of a 
reptile, or rescue any mortal in bod}' or soul. Let 
them inherit and improve an educated hand, not like 
the show-pipe on an organ, but a most miraculous 
organ itself! Abraham Lincoln, born to hew and draw, 
sink an axe in a log deeper than any other man, and 
fight off the roughs from his flat-boat in the Mississippi, 
educated his hand for the helm of state, and to sign 
the great Proclamation of Freedom in which the Decla- 
ration of Independence was complete. From tending 
sheep he came to shepherd the crowd of Disunited States, 



TRAINING. 179 

to subdue political rams and encourage the timid flock, 
keep them together and get them along, lead the terri- 
tories read}' to bring forth, and bear the weak Borders 
as lambs in his bosom ; with a pull from the heart- 
strings on his pen above any tug at the plough-tail or 
mainsail, and a crash about this civil Samson's shoul- 
ders louder than of any Dagon or temple at Gaza ; and 
a speech over the soldiers' graves that cast into the 
shade all classic rhetoric. Let him teach us to culti- 
vate the hand, which we must have, before we can lend. 
When the iniquitous law hunted for the fugitive slave, 
it was, in yonder village, the hand of a graduate of 
the hammer and plane that took him ragged, wayworn, 
and wet, not only into his house, but his own bed, 
with a benediction sweet as heaven's, to win a love, 
great as for wife or child, from the bondsman to the 
benefactor whose hand had been to him as the hand of 
God. "When the pilot, Paul Elson, makes a raft to 
carry off crew and passengers from the foundering ship, 
and swims after to recover those swept away, till he 
himself sinks exhausted in the waves ; — no, not he, only 
his bod}' sank, — to be survived by those he had saved, 
what will you quote more beautiful of Moses or Jesus, 
as if aught better in any sacred story could be ? When 
a 3'oung girl, seeing a child ready to be run over b}' a 
drunken driver, springs in front of the cart, seizes the 
bridle at the bit, and forces the horse back on his 
haunches, standing an angel of deliverance between 
life and a vision of sudden death, who of either sex 
will not envy and emulate such trained ability, as well 
as disposition to act ? 

" True heart and faithful hand ! " 



180 THE RISING FAITH. 

Covet not the wings of angels till you have found the 
use of the hands, which can do more than any pinions ! 
Let us not think to plume ourselves ; cherub and seraph 
may be good for a figure, but impossible in fact. The 
organ hereafter will be something finer, yet correspond- 
ing to the hand which is our seal of honor here. 

But hold no narrow notion what it is to do ! Men 
must be handled in a battle or the mill, as w r ell as tools ; 
and there is a hand of the mind which we call the will. 
Outward stir is not labor, nor the gross result its gauge. 
No measure more false than manual toil. If Jesus 
worked on the bench when he was a boy, he did more 
in bulk, but how much less in amount than when he 
talked in Galilee and Samaria, though I doubt not his 
carpentry had its share in his tongue ; yet what insignifi- 
cant figure, in the sum, the boards, nails and boxes he 
planed and drove and made ! His vision was action ; 
his beholding his hold on history, and his suffering 
doing, more than rubbing the ears of corn, casting the 
net, or helping draw water from Jacob's well. His 
sweat in the garden was from a sorer stint than in any 
July meadow ; it being easier to exert our will than 
to give it up by marvellous effort of will within, and to 
check the iron wheels, than put on the brakes of 
patience. At first, certain female reformers spoke as 
inspired ; afterwards, they appeared with the nation's 
weight on their shoulders, and God stepped out ! 
Labor is confined, not defined by muscular force. Its 
grace has more mouths than the Nile to empty by. So 
man}' men, so many hands ; but they are good hands 
or poor, according to their conscience and intelligence. 
The hand of Turner, Thorwaldsen or Rubinstein to 



TRAINING. 181 

have its value measured like a trench-digger's by the 
clock? What is in the hand, lead or gold? It is a 
bare vessel ; the contents are all ! One player is 
a gambler on his instrument, another a revealer ; the 
hand we move becomes another hand when God moves 
it, as the wheel driven by steam, or a head of water 
does more than that turned by a crank. ;; Excuse my 
glove ! " What better is it than the kid or goat 
or calf as a good emblem you hide it in ? How much 
less worth than the stones and rings you load and cut 
your flesh with ! When peace means avarice and 
hypocrisy, the steel gauntlet is preferable to the velvet 
cuff. There are actors not on the stage, yet playing 
a part with their hands wherever they go, every motion 
a pretence, every gesture a lie ; and good and brave 
was it, when on the platform once in Faneuil Hall, 
a sincere man refused to take a sycophant's hand. We 
can afford to let the dramatic entertainment go on, 
which selfish artifice makes the world a theatre for, if 
we deal frankly at each encounter. Let us not only 
direct, but discipline our hands ; our main business 
right enterprise and just restraint. We Yankees so 
love to finger, that Hands off is the placard at the 
store and Fair, and warnings not to touch the pic- 
tures posted in the galleries ; as if it were muscular 
and not ocular detection of beauty in canvas or stone. 
But is there nothing to keep hands off but a picture 
or .a peach ? To touch the painted Madonna or statue 
of Apollo were a trifle, to rude and unapostolic laying 
of hands on a human being ! The boxer hits from the 
shoulder ; but combativeness subtly reaches down and 
oozes through the finger-tips, as more of the electric 



182 THE RISING FAITn. 

fluid streams and tingles through its conductors than 
startles us with an} r shock. My lightning-rod draws 
more silently from the air than from any tempest ! We 
are channels, or suction-pipes and forcing-pumps, all the 
valves opening one way, as certain persons arc suckers 
upon us, in vulgar speech. I have no right, said Dr. 
Wayland, to lay my hand on your shoulder ; but that 
hand gave more than it took ! We are at peace, said a 
countryman, in our house, because we keep two bears, 
bear and forbear ; but if, as the poet tells us, it is for- 
bearance not to pluck the wayside flower as we pass, 
are there not flowers of innocence and living beauty to 
spare? and, as the old Jews purged themselves with 
religious rites, do we not need more than ceremonial 
purifj'ing for every relation of life ? This real baptism 
will serve better than any poring over the plague of our 
own heart ; and the worth of work is to express and 
promote a state of mind. It has been said of certain 
fair neutrals and ciphers that, though they add not to 
the common wealth, they contribute themselves, and 
" beauty is its own excuse for being ; " to be looked at 
and admired at table, in a coach, or at a party, though, 
like the lawyers Jesus reproved, the}' lift not a finger. 
But was woman ever more splendid at a dance than she 
who saved the two youths from drowning on the beach ? 
The Concord preacher, who was " good at a fire/' could 
not have been more graceful in the desk. A weak mem- 
ber, like a cake unturned, that cannot move a chair, wash 
a robe, cany a child over the stream, or bear furniture 
from the flames, is none such as Hagar, when cast out 
with Isaac, had ; but despicable and not worth a cent. 
However held up and clisplaj'ed with gewgaws, it is not 



TRAINING. 183 

deserving of acceptance in marriage, or counted a fit 
subject by any artist. How many alive, like some in 
pictures, know not what to do with their hands ! From 
whom but One whose hand was never shortened do 
we derive, as one spring connects with another under 
ground, and a chain of water runs from Superior to the 
sea? 

The motto is, service. Not for myself, but for you ! 
Can I say a word to teach, lighten a burden or heal a 
wound, roll the stone from the sepulchre or unbury 
affections long dead, lift the pall from some dear one's 
coffin or keep it from settling on your own ; convince 
you that the shroud is nothing to you, as Socrates told 
his friend they might do what funeral piety the} r 
pleased if they could catch him after the breath was 
gone ; then that is what I am for, and nr^self is my 
sacrifice. True communism or internationally is not 
to stop work because another profession gets more than 
mine, or to beat my brother in the same calling because 
he will not stand out with me for higher wages, or to 
grudge him his better pay for a cheaper article ; for the 
commission to work is for its proceeds not to my purse, 
but my kind ; and, live high or low, let me bring all 
the honey I find to the hive till I die. To make hu- 
manity the means, instead of end, of our ambition, is 
to blaspheme that Holy Ghost whose worship in the 
beauty of holiness is better than the daily offering at 
the Hebrew shrine, for it is an imitation of God. u I 
am that I am." But he is too what he becomes. The 
universe is himself produced. He is no eternal monot- 
ony, but versatility of benefit beyond all scientific ken. 
Christianity is but the cloth of one pattern which 



184 THE RISING FAITH. 

his mercy wears. All is material for us, to build a 
den or temple, a house or tomb. But the sweat of 
humane labor carries off impurities not of the body 
only, but the soul. Planning for your race will occupy 
your time without newspaper or book ; but all will be 
tragedy on earth while man is so cheap, and the finan- 
cier hunts through the day for the lost cent in his 
columns, and the human fraction is of no account. No 
pure felicity is our lot : 

" Evil and Good before him stand ! " 

The artist, whose attention I called to a brilliant scene 
for his pencil, said, " There are no shadows, and it will 
not do ; " and the shadows round our mortality have 
their charm in the great limner's canvas. But let the 
substance be solid and sound ! Work the clay out of 
our composition, we will say ; for as refuse in the bod}^ 
not eliminated through the perspiring pores, becomes 
fever, palsy, congestion and cancer, so an idle unprof- 
itable life suffices to generate ill humor and waste good 
temper. The father who said he had kept his son to 
the grindstone, rated not too high the value of dil- 
igence. 

Training implies indoctrination. We hear of children, 
without prejudice, forming their own opinions ! Such 
independence, if possible, were a curse. Thought is 
transmitted like blood. They must share our circula- 
tions and be set in mid current of the best ideas of the 
time. Growth in mind or matter is the law. What is 
not garden will be tangled wilderness and swamp. 
Wise was the Jews' telling their sons God's ways and 
laws ; for truth is no individual possession but a tra- 



TRAINING. 185 

dition, not hid but transmitted, cleansed and enriched as 
it goes ; the human brain it is strained through refined 
and enlarged from it as with increments of a crystal . The 
head meliorates in a bee or bird ; why not in an African 
or Chinese? With all our pioneering, we must, like 
Alpine travellers, hang together. A footpath is better 
through the forest than breaking one's own track. How 
we praise a good road ! Such should a church or con- 
stitution be. Why despise customs and institutions, 
which are but moral railways ? Some new question of 
improvement is always on hand, like teaching the sexes 
together ; for change is in order. Only see to it that, 
in this human train, the coupling do not break. 



VIII. 

FOEMS. 

WE all proceed on some theory of the world, 
either as an eternal substance of matter, an 
unfolding of invisible atoms from below, or a projec- 
tion, like the precipitate of a transparent solution from 
above. The six days' creation, as labor reckons time, 
or as enormous periods, is exploded if only because a 
day, anywise construed, is what we want an under- 
standing and account of; for what is a day but the 
lighted room which all these shows of heaven and earth 
appear in? The scientist brings his report of facts, 
and laws they fall under ; but the learned creature does 
not include himself in his catalogue, and coolly takes 
for granted what we are most curious about. 

" Lord, how it looks about ! — 
It carries a brave form," 

cries Miranda, of Ferdinand, who in turn thinks her 
the goddess of the island. Her question, " What is't ? " 
must be solved somehow, and we must be sure of the 
witness before we accept the testimony. We can 
rest in no idea but of infinity taking form, the idea of 
Job. " Lo, these are the Border of thy works, but the 
(186) 



FORMS. 187 

thunder of thy power who can understand ? " The 
notion of evolution, while we are thoughtless of in- 
volution or airrthing to evolve and care but for what 
comes to the surface as the foam of this everlasting 
deep, is ignorance but one remove from the brute's. 
The soul is satisfied only with the unfathomable life of 
which every manifestation is some figure ; and we are 
confirmed by the study that drives death everywhere 
out, finding instead of that phantom only living force, 
of which shape and color are the decoration and dress. 
What right to this idea, asks the materialist, and 
the metaphysician joins hands in his cross-examination. 
But ideas exist prior to the sun and moon, and do not 
submit to question on any logical rack. It is no indi- 
vidual whose title is interrogated, but the human mind ; 
and the trial must be had in every tongue, there being 
no language above pure barbarism and the beast, but 
has the terms that stand for the eternal and immense. 
In a fight with human speech in all its sounds and lex- 
icons, philosophy must have the worst. The least 
attempt at acquaintance with myself shows me the 
door out of all finite particulars, and compels me to 
say, — Before Abraham was I am ; and I was loved of 
God before the foundation of the world. The investi- 
gator who steps with phenomena and his nice arrange- 
ments as a sufficient explanation, further than which 
there is no need to go, is as a man who wishes n.o ex- 
position of himself be}T>nd the family Bible or register 
of the town. Doubtless I was born in wedlock ; the 
elate is correct, and my surname no mistake \ there is 
some resemblance of features to those by whom I was 
begot and conceived ; certain traits of talent and dis- 



188 THE RISING FAITH. 

position run in the blood, and I am an instrument of 
a particular pattern in the grand orchestra of mankind. 
But, as Miranda says, " 'Tis a spirit ; " and that is 
what no almanac can measure and no cradle contain. 
It is absurd to suppose any mortal beginning of it or 
end in death. Through all familiarity with myself 
grows my surprise, and I must push my explanations 
gently, and in my interior motions balance myself 
carefully with outward things in order to preserve 
reason and keep sanity in this cracking and crumbling 
clay. 

I have not got the dimensions of my nature, as of 
the garments I wear or house I build. The vein, I mine, 
runs and widens out of sight. I can fit my child's 
foot with a shoe, but not him with any speculation 
I weave. I see a great genius in music, painting or 
poetry hurled like a new celestial body into the fir- 
mament, to sing and send down melodies never heard 
before from the upper chime and to sketch on a bit of 
paper what no visible scene suggests, and then with- 
drawn in a moment as a flaming comet slides out of 
sight ; and of its origin or onward track what has 
genealogy to sa}^, save to wonder in some case, like 
the Christ, if it could have grown on the family-tree ! 
Is it but a form, like a bubble blown but to break, or 
an informing essence no chance can make or mar? 
All matter turns to motion, and motion to heat, and 
heat to force ; and force to will, and will to thought 
enacted, and thought to will reflected ; and if my 
loving and thinking in this wondrous but not vicious 
circle be not abiding power, to me there is none. 
Change is not destruction, but transfer, in a wave that 



FORMS. 189 

bursts or a wind that lulls, in a leaf that puts forth or 
withers away ; in birth no more and in death no less. 
Decajing wood passes into lichen and moss ; the coal 
is part of the sun alike in the quarry and the grate ; 
and the same luminary uses the same air-currents, to 
burn at the tropic and freeze at the pole, and has for 
its equal offspring the snow and the rain. The fish we 
cannot eat is phosphorescent, and the punk we cannot 
carve is nearer than the green tree to fire ; — are we in 
our dissolution more akin, than in verdant youth, to the 
celestial spark ? All is trivial if but finite stuff mounting 
to nonentity ; all is dignity, if every flitting phenomenon 
be some ghost of being without bound. There is a 
poem in which a grass-blade pleads -its case as a 
homely sister against the pomp of the gorgeous rose, 
whose splendor is only a different dress ; nothing so 
small but with its share of measureless glory, and that 
is done to the greatest, which we do to the least. 

That there is any nothing, but spirit, is empty conceit. 
Some of the sailors of Columbus imagined, in the long 
"Westward course, there was no end of sea, and insisted 
on turning back before they were lost in the waste. 
But there is no waste of nature to be lost in. " Out, 
brief candle?" It is out into itself again, its equiv- 
alent in some other form ; and there is no annihilation 
of the flame of life. The bottomless space, unstirred 
w T ith any consciousness, were a ghastly tomb ; but, as 
the room an infinite vitality inhabits, works in and con- 
tains, it is a manifold mansionry. That the earth was 
ever "without form and void" will answer for a fable 
of the fancy, but is neither poetiy nor truth ; form clings 
to creation closer than a shadow, and there is no void. 



190 THE RISING FAITH. 

Not decease but change is the universal law. A witty 
clergyman said when he considered the faces in a con- 
gregation, with features departing from the line of 
beauty so many ways, the eyes too near or wide apart, 
the ears too long or loose, the mouth uneven or the 
countenance unequally bisected by the nose, he took 
great comfort in the apostolic declaration that we shall 
all be changed ! But Paul delivered indeed a sublime 
eternal decree, of which all science is the handmaid. 
We are so used to being that we lay out our wonder on 
continuance. But being and not continuance is the 
marvel ; and cessation is beyond possibility or rational 
belief. I am amazed at myself as a man, but shall be 
less so as an angel with whatever new sense or faculty 
or provision for other journey ; for not an}' outfit is my 
surprise, but the willing power in me, the fire and loco- 
motive of the soul, be the road I take and scenes I ride 
through what they ma}' ; and it is no wise or pro- 
found, but cheap and commonplace conclusion that 
there is no more road for travel because I stop at a 
way-station or am switched off from the main track. 
If there is to be, O scientist, any destruction, let it be 
some of the force you talk of ; let it be a beam of light, 
ray of heat, drop of the electric or magnetic current, 
before we go to heart and thought ! Let gravitation 
be interrupted and not the tendency to the truth ; let 
the system of the sky be suspended, not the wisdom of 
society ; let the North Star and not justice drop from 
its post ; let the sun stand still on Gibeon, but not the 
goodness that traverses the circuit of nature and blazes 
in the human breast ! 

It is not strange that men in all time and every sort 



FORMS. 191 

of religion have found it so hard to conceive of any ter- 
mination and have universally held to transformation 
even when the}' knew not enough to see in its types 
natural processes. From migration of the birds they 
have gone to transmigration of the soul, not stumbling 
at the difficulty, our materialists cannot get over, of 
extricating it from the body ; for the veracious instinct 
has not suffered them, with ancient sciolism or modern 
conceit, to hold flesh as the substance and mind the 
accident, one of the properties of matter ; but matter 
rather as " the frail and weary weed of mortality that 
clothes us" in time. Transfiguration of a prophet, 
Jesus on the mountain ? All is transfiguration ; but 
what is transfigured ? Tell of perdition ? There is and 
can be none ! Talk of being confounded with Deity ? 
No such confusion ! As the schoolmen say an atom 
cannot be crushed, this fiery particle in us cannot be 
quenched ; for this curious primordial creature, which 
I am, once in and aware of itself, is sure that the es- 
sence which is its constitution is to be disposed of only 
by being somehow preserved. 

All our associations and affections so hang round 
some visible or imagined form, that even the Lord is a 
man, and Bishop Butler can expound the love of God 
only by a boundless increase of our regard for the good 
of human kind. Finding how the soul feeds on form, 
and without it would starve, beside natural we invent 
artificial forms or put on the natural a peculiar stamp 
as on coin from the mint, that we may have a sort of 
holy money current to pass for religious faith and I03- 
alty, a legal tender in the kingdom not of this world ; 
and the loftiest scorner of ceremony is not quite inde- 



192 THE RISING FAITH. 

pendent of this meaning. For though there be no 
refuge like thought, which we retreat to from all disap- 
pointments and wounds, we live largely in sentiment, 
and sentiment craves attachment like a creeper. It is 
the vine that makes porch, of house and temple, beau- 
tiful. One art, that of music, the express organ of 
feeling, at once emancipates from outward leanings, to 
float us in its waves of sound above ritual, and make 
hearing a substitute for sight. A divine composition 
is a delicious dissatisfaction with this world. It is 
shame at all we are or have been. It is a descent and 
hint of heaven to convey what we never saw or expe- 
rienced, and an Elijah's chariot to go up without death. 
It is resolution to a better life, worthy of the friends at 
our side or dear ones whom it glorifies with invisible 
revealing and impalpable touch. A musician cannot 
be an infidel though a metaphysician may ; and when 
we are in the musical state ordinances are vain. Row- 
ing on the open sea I heard a soft mellow breathing, 
that came and went ; and, looking from my oars, saw 
a porpoise rolling in the brine. How it refreshed him 
to rise from the gross water, he inhabited, and get an 
inspiration from the air ! We live in two elements. 
When in the upper one we straightway expect more of 
others and demand more of ourselves. We are mor- 
tified at the facts of our existence and esteem all con- 
duct mean. Observances then are needless ; the pure 
ether is enough for the time. But we cannot abide on 
the mount. There are no tabernacles ! We might as 
well pitch a tent on Teneriffe to stay all the year round. 
We must come down from spiritual vision and antici- 
pation, to our journey and our task ; to shake hands 



FORMS. 193 

and say, good-morning, to our fellow-travellers and 
fellow-toilers and to all the decent conventions by which 
we can understand and g«t along with one another, in 
religion, government and social life. But let us bring 
the elevation with us, have some light of the trans- 
figuration cleave to our garments, and not, like Peter, 
leave the fine emotion at the top. For what do we 
meet and worship but to embody the unspotted beauty 
and clearer equity ? Forms are but vessels ; they will 
have that in them which we pour out from our heart. 
Let the free-thinker, to whom they appear confining and 
close, remember that the slender vials are corked to 
hold precious essences and odors. Culture may take 
the place of conventionality. It is noticed that schol- 
ars and artists, as a class, care not for preaching. 
They are willing that poor ministers and superstitious 
priests should admire and purchase their pictures and 
books. But an artist said : I get nothing from these 
fellows that write and read aloud their transcendental 
essays. How when the}' praise his landscape or por- 
trait ? Be devoted to your specialty ; but this nar- 
rowness that cannot look or pass beyond its lines, is 
meaner than fighting ; for soldiers exchange on opposite 
sides, tokens of good-will when not engaged in conflict. 
It is no more worth}' of respect than the despised close 
communion at a Baptist table. Surely the arts as well 
as the sciences have a common bond ; and, as thorough 
information is the well-understood basis of excellence 
in any department, he will be a less noble painter or 
sculptor who is that alone. 

There are dawnings of eternal ideas on the soul so 
much more glorious than forms that these are apt to 
13 



194 THE RISING FAITH. 

encounter intellectual contempt ; and every fixture is 
mocked by the ever-shifting sceneiy of the created 
scene. An accredited form is modest as a bank-bill, 
and has as many uses. Its range stops not short of 
the grandest motives and deepest wants. A certain 
stability is needful in the universal flux. Friendship 
is delightful, thought is consoling, nature is beautiful ; 
but a well-ordered state is convenient, to prevent inter- 
ference, hush altercation, reconcile misunderstandings 
and arrange disputed bounds. We have two appeals 
to our own reflections and to Caesar ; the civil estab- 
lishment or law. Let us as often as we may employ 
the first. We love our kind ; but individuals are less 
to be relied on than is Reason in her roomy court and 
with her dry and steadfast light. When the wind 
with you is west, how I enjoy }~our atmosphere ; but 
how chilly the easterly turn which the climate of so 
few people is quite without ! A late traveller tells of 
an island in the Pacific Sea where the air is such balm 
that pulmonary consumption cannot go on. That 
island is no man and no woman ! No mortal has 
breathed, on whose geniality some qualification must 
not be put. Even Jesus is criticised as having, with 
his all but perfect sweetness and light, some heady 
Hebrew inheritance in his blood. But there is a 
refuge, of musing, in every bosom without taint, 
as in certain spots of Oregon and Minnesota purity 
withstands decay. Of this quality solemn sacraments 
are the external t} T pes ; and therefore the provisional 
appeal of the half-developed is to them. 

Our spiritual philosophy scorns formality in favor of 
sensibility. But what is the proverb for fickleness but 



FORMS. 195 

this eternal love ? Is it an extravagant fanc} T , in the 
poet, that a flower squeezed on sleeping eyelids b}^ 
Puck or Oberon should make or mar affection, and 
between divers persons shift it back and forth ? How- 
many a one has waked and looked on his partner with 
an altered eve ! How many a mate hesitates at the 
altar, or flees in horror from the marriage-bed, and how 
many a dream of delight, as with Adam and Eve, has 
been scattered by the morning sun ! Whence the most 
denounced yet most dangerous theory of our day, but 
from the manifold infidelities arising from caprices of 
this same heart which we praise and flatter so much, 
and put all bonds and instruments at the mercy of? 
The nature of disloyalty has in all ages been well 
enough known. But it remained for our time to exalt 
inconstancy into a principle, for men and women to 
declare when the mood is over the companion ought to 
be left ; and for the maiden to affirm that in crossing 
and sundering prior obligations, with her own inno- 
cence for both sacrifice and sword, is nothing wrong ! 
Perjury has become a virtue ; and prostitution, as a 
vice, has passed over from illicit intercourse to be a 
name for keeping promises and fidelity to recorded 
vows. In such a revolution w r e hunt round, as Tor the 
survivors of shipwreck, to see where conscience and 
purity have sunk or still swim perilously on the flood. 
Is it because we have heaped such eulogy on the affec- 
tions, that they have taken the bit in their mouth to 
run away with us ; and by a law of nature is a false 
doctrine concerning them so dreadfully avenged? If 
aught be everlasting it is a holy love. But how many 
a selfish humor is falsely so baptized ! Be sure of the 



196 THE RISING FAITH. 

holiness/ and that you are unselfed in your regard, and 
then take out your warrant of endless duration ! But 
so many a whim of appetite palms itself off for the 
unquenchable flame, that we want the engagement, 
betrothal, written security, seal on the document ; the 
form as the pledge and poise of the sentiment still. 

It seemed, said one, looking at some ancient pictures, 
that they were the realities, and we men and women 
the shadows gliding over the floor. Three Napoleons 
have looked at the paintings in the Louvre ; and the 
thunder of their cannon and lightning of their eyes 
have gone ; but the silent Madonna of Raphael, Con- 
ception of Murillo, and Wedding-feast at Cana of Paul 
Veronese, shine in the peaceful galleries still. We 
must not make too much of our emotions until we are 
certain they are divine, and derived into ours from the 
bosom of God. Of the individuality and egotism of 
passion, we must make nothing, but to extinguish as 
more threatening than any other fire. My thanks to 
you, said a lowly woman to her benefactor, are but 
rising dust. Under that speech was what should last 
when all the dust of the globe should cease to fly ! 
But such is the fugitiveness of much pretended incli- 
nation, that we learn the importance of an order in 
human affairs imposed against particular vagaries by 
the common sense, as for restive horses and unbroken 
colts we respect halters and the chain and post. The 
ke} r s of trust, the oaths of office, the s}^mbols of alli- 
ances and leagues, the flags of nations, the lilies or 
stars, the paper engravings and colored cloths, the 
understood language of union in some communit}-, 
enterprise or cause, go under the name of Form. 



FORMS. 197 

Children are born and old men die, and families, root 
and branch, vanish from sight, and generations pass 
while thej' endure. Their meaning is adopted and 
conveyed, as by every wire in the air and cable under 
the sea the electric message goes ; and but for some 
such communication, there were no posterity or human 
race. 

First, Form is not surface, but the base of beauty, 
outside and centre too. We say of something, it is a 
mere form. But our body is a mere form, and our 
spirit too. 

"For soul is form, and doth the body make." 

When we talk of a formative, as of a vital principle, 
we imagine a power or unseen sculptor that fashions 
every character, from the saint's purity in visible 
shape, to the villain " quoted and signed to do a deed 
of shame." But no appearance can be destitute of 
grace. In deformity is beauty, as there is nought that 
will not sparkle in the concentrated light of the sun. 
Form is the whole of nature and substance of art. It 
includes color in the light and shade, of which Goethe 
taught that all the tints of the rainbow are but propor- 
tions. If the earth were or ever could be formless and 
void, it were not beautiful, and to us would not be. 

Form is, next, communication, for which words do 
not quite suffice, though one spoke as many tongues as 
those conceited Corinthians who called their hubbub a 
religious meeting. How many a handsome form is the 
stenography of speech ; and what a silent eloquence, 
beyond that of Webster or Kossuth, is in good manners ; 
and how all the Fourth of July orations are condensed 



198 THE RISING FAITH. 

beforehand in the banner by which the procession is 
led ! Great events and virtues ask, more than fleeting 
breath, graveyard marble and inscriptions, pictures 
and statues, soldiers' monuments and memorial halls ; 
and with all the scorn of giving a stone instead of 
bread, better some of us starve than leave noble 
achievements without trace of grateful recollection. 
As the vineyards round Vesuvius tell the volcanic heats 
better than airy list of eruptions ; and the reefs and 
still lagoons are the mausoleum of myriads of insect- 
workers through a thousand leagues of the Pacific Sea ; 
so some solid register and warm cherishing of historic 
honor spring from the instinct of mankind. 

In the amber of form is preserved what is precious 
of the past. The progressive schemer says, of who- 
ever savors of the ancient order of things, what a 
fossil ! But note the value of fossils ! On them rests 
the entire philosoprry of our day. The antiquity of the 
race back of the Mosaic chronology, the similarity of 
structure which make the animated kingdoms one 
family ; the arms, tools and utensils that show the 
ages of stone, iron and bronze, dug from caves, im- 
bedded in sand or rock ; the present resurrections from 
countless sepulchres, the shells on mountain-sides and 
skeletons of elephant and mammoth in polar ice ; the 
germs and dots of primeval life formed into line whoso 
rising continuity reaches the human heart and brain, 
are all fossils. The animal instincts, graded up 
into the conscience and love of the human soul, while 
still present in the surrounding brute-life, are reminders 
of enormous lapses of time. Wiry should the scientist 
laugh at the theologian's antiquities, while he deals so 



FORMS. 199 

largely in his own ? A parchment, manuscript, Vinci's 
painting of the Last Supper, the carved Procession of 
the Golden Candlestick in the Interior of the Arch of 
Titus, some rude engraving of an earl}' baptism in the 
river Jordan, tell more than all the superimposed strata 
of the globe. Why should the scholarly critic smile at 
the worshipper's reverence ? The one is as fond of rare 
books, old copies, strange versions and costly volumes 
with the author's name in his own hand, as is the other 
of his ancient Service. The transcendental price of 
some Shakespeare Folio, or of Boccacio's Decameron 
under the hammer, is as much a superstition as any 
Lord's Supper or Jew's Passover. I cannot allow my 
friend to decry present and past, to-day's newspaper 
and Asiatic tradition in the same breath ! The use of 
fo^ms is to preserve what ma}' be more worthy than 
aught transpiring now. If it be foolish to think the 
former ages better, it is more unwise to esteem the last 
every way best. You inform me that evolution, ever 
finer and higher, is the law. Into what loftier poet has 
Homer or Shakespeare been evolved? Why do you 
scarce care to read an}' poetry less than a hundred 
years old? Wherefore new editions and translations 
of Aristotle and Plato? While the genius survives in 
a single breast to need the Greek food, or for mere 
shame that humanity should leave its treasures behind 
on the march, the volumes reappear. Are the old 
worthies outstripped for not having been able to make 
a steam-engine, as a radical reasoner said? But Titian 
and Michel Angelo must have taken their brush with 
them to paint yet where they go, and in their majestic 
presence, despite cerement and shroud, do we not stand 



200 THE RISING FAITH. 

with bare head ? What sublimer saint or type of sanc- 
tity, in these ends of the earth, than Jesus the Christ? 
Is the planet evolving into grander trees than the olives 
of Juclea or the California pines? Monte Nuovo, near 
Naples, is the last height the elements have thrown up. 
But its measure is only a few hundred feet ; and the 
old Himalaya hills look down five miles on the sur- 
veyor's glass. So on whom of our contemporary bards 
do Milton, and Dante, the Master of Tuscan song, not 
bend their compassionate gaze? The upheavals of 
revelation in Egypt or Palestine may deserve contem- 
plation more than creeds of our Synod or conversations 
in our Club ; as revolutions in Mexico or Spain, China 
and Japan may be pregnant of issues so trifling as not 
to merit mention with overturnings that first received 
the name ; and in certain ecclesiastical customs those 
immense occurrences are conserved. Is anything trans- 
ported from far coasts or tropic waters, dredged from 
the sea, embalmed in spirit — bugs, fishes, scorpions, 
snakes — more precious than the relics of mankind's 
struggles to embrace the Infinite and compass an 
immortal sight? Impatient of the slow motion of -the 
migh^ host, some solitary horseman gallops forward 
for an observation, but soon rides back. So every spy, 
we send out, returns to the main bod}" with his report. 
It is better to halt for a straggler than push on so as to 
break the lines. For ever}" lost companion we must 
wait. Strong meat is good ; but, beside w T ild game of 
new and strange doctrine, we must have milk for 
babes. 

Form is justice as well as love. The spirit in man 
ever tends to excess, and threatens to break bounds ; 



FORMS. 201 

and. for its restraint, we must have modes of procedure 
by general consent, for person and property ; to punish 
offences and repair wrongs ; to prevent revenge and 
pot for private seizure a common decree ; law for 
Lynch law and courts for vigilance committees and 
ku-klux clans. To what a sea of passion these forms, 
on slips of paper, say. Thus far and no farther, like 
wide beaches and rocky shores ! Without this legal 
hem and girdle all men. like so many untutored chil- 
dren, would run to and grasp, each all he could, of those 
playthings of possession we amuse ourselves with. 
International Law keeps a strong power, like Russia or 
Germany, from being the bully and oppressor of the 
weak, and forces the proudest of nations to pay a fine 
of millions for malfeasance. Mind the great curb- 
stone on the world's highways ; not knowing whom 
any collision will crush most. 

When harm or delay ensues from ill-advised or over- 
strict adherence to form, we ridicule it as too much 
Red Tape. Did it not starve Crimean soldiers because 
the authorized distributor had not arrived ; and deny 
stimulus to the fainting prisoner, Foster, because the 
physician was not on the spot ? But informality would 
have a harder reckoning of unhappy results. Nelson 
saves the naval battle by insisting that the letter to the 
enemy should be duly folded and sealed so as not to 
betray haste. How much may hang on a bit of wax ! 
Bonaparte, inventor of diplomacy, frightens the Aus- 
trian ambassador by dashing to the floor a precious 
vase, as the image of a broken realm. Like notches in 
a windlass, cog-wheels in a mill, the nice adjustments 
in a clock, or successive chambers ending in the He- 



202 THE RISING FAITH. 

brew Holy of Holies, are our legal forms, certified 
elections, organized assemblies, rules of debate, mo- 
tions, amendments, previous questions, clivers read- 
ings, gubernatorial signatures or vetoes. They are 
so many gates for equity to enter and lock in- 
iquity out. Justice may not alwa} T s be done; "the 
law's delay " is a proverb of centuries ; without some 
appeal mankind would go mad and tribunals be over- 
set ; interruptions, men are called to order for, may 
serve order best ; the hiss or clap, for which the gal- 
leries are cleared, may scatter senatorial fog, and 
outraged nature contradicting a false witness with 
impropriety promote truth ; trials by jury failing to 
convict crime must be put on trial, and when lobbying 
in the Legislature is the power behind greater than 
the throne, it must be ventilated by a Republican 
breeze ; nevertheless the forms are dykes against mis- 
chief, and secure a reasonable ratio of right. If they 
are not the river of God to cleanse the stains and 
bear the great treasures of the world, they are canals 
to irrigate the territory, and further, however slowly, 
what w^ould else stop on the way. 

In society, forms introduce such as have claims on 
each other, and protect from injurious approach. Your 
boasted want of ceremony must have some grace and 
bounty for its excuse ! We are on our good behavior 
every hour, as with a ticket of leave. That man's 
look, said a woman, was an affront as he passed. Our 
accosting or aversion, the warmth or moderation of our 
greeting, graduated by acquaintance or relation ; the 
glance of a moment or steacty gaze ; the dawning 
smile, whose lines on the lips no science can measure, 



FORMS. 203 

having an infinity beyond the cycles in the sky, are 
forms, conscious or instinctive, to show the polish of 
culture ; a spontaneous goodness or barbarism in its 
rough bark. In them lurks the reason of others' like 
or dislike the}' know not why. While they express our 
character and design, an artist in the studio of the 
breast, unseen and unawares, makes a memory-sketch 
of the countenance which is itself the record of ten 
thousand mingling strokes from all we have intended 
or indulged. " What a piece of work is man ! In 
form and moving how express and admirable ! " But 
it is made b} T itself ! Did Jesus on the Cross draw all 
men to him? Are } t ou a refuge, wherein a forlorn 
woman feels secure against others, and safe from your- 
self, within the shield you hold over her ? While you 
stanch a flesh-wound, does sympathy, finer woven than 
any linen or cambric, check the more bitter bleeding 
of the heart ? Can you win the confidence of a child, 
that small citadel so hard to take ? It is because of a 
sentiment vigorous enough to stamp itself in the habit 
of your frame ; and if, deserted, you retreat on your 
love, no fond devotion is a posture so grand. 

Dress or address is form. Every article of apparel is 
part of the history of the race ; and be}'ond the pyramids 
dates the cuff of my coat. The reason w r hy we resist 
the approximation of the female to the male attire, is 
in the importance of indicating difference of sex ; the 
woman's naturally greater privacy giving her the priv- 
ilege of seclusion in her apparel, that the sphere of her 
sensibility be not invaded ; and, while men trade and 
wrestle, no debenture on her delicacy allowed. She 
must be protected, put what you will on the Free List ! 



204 THE RISING FAITH. 

Marriage is a form, and the form parts not from the 
substance. Spirit, in order of thought, precedes and 
survives, yet ordains and constitutes form ; and cannot, 
even in God, exist out of it. So Paul shrank from 
being unclothed, except to be clothed upon. So Words- 
worth says, " Not in utter nakedness we come from 
God who is our home." So Jesus says how fatal the 
lack of a wedding-garment ; and so the elder in the 
Revelation asks, "Who are these in white robes ?" 
Christ's leave-taking is with no abstract lesson or for- 
lorn abstinence, but a feast of bread and wine ; and 
Louis Kossuth, pleading for Hungary, cried, We will 
take the Last Supper and go to the field. We feed the 
survivors from the Halifax wreck with no heap of pro- 
visions thrown down, but from tables neatly spread 
with every clean dish and white cloth, the sacred house- 
hold form as pleasant as the savory meat to the e}^es 
of those escaped castaways, hungry from the devour- 
ing waves ! If forms are not interiors, neither such is 
the bark of a tree, bridle of a horse, soldier's belt, 
virgin's zone or guide-post that points the wa} T ; all 
hinting a certain stability in the moral as the material 
world, and equal need of direction. Like beacons on 
headlands, or red posts at railway crossings, how many 
signals in human looks, whose neglect is occasion of 
worse than an}' overthrow on land or foundering at sea ! 
There is a geography of morals as of the globe ; a 
latitude in opinion as on the ocean ; a chart of conduct 
as well as a map of Coast Soundings or Behring's 
Straits, and a projector, Moses or Jesus, to draw the 
one as well as Mercator or Bowditch, Xewton 01 
Kepler, for mensuration of the other. Rocks and 



FORMS. 205 

shoals and quicksands must be laid down, and not left 
to ever new private discover}'. We despise not the 
remains from which we construct our theory of the 
animal realm ; why disparage the relics that embody 
the experience of the race? "Vestiges of Creation" 
was the title of the book that began the scientific 
revolution ; and, amid the footprints of successive 
creatures populating the globe, who so blind as not to 
trace one Power in its unvarying track ! No teaching 
from Him, who makes the whole earth his record, of 
our respect for the past? What are those ancient cliffs 
but planetaiy aeons from his eternity rolling back, or 
caught in some wondrous embalming of time? The 
seams of trap-lock, showing the lines of parallel force, 
or holding up an enormous figure of the cross, the 
granite gorges, the wasted overhanging branches with 
infant buds that moisten the eyes looking at the picture, 
in wdiich the former ages and last mornings that shone 
mingle their tints, are lines in the register of God, 
that show his elemental work. So, in every custom, the 
action of human nature appears. Much is antiquated, 
and must from present practice be dismissed. But 
the obsolete instructs us how to lay out the new ways. 
From Eden forsaken, streams light on Eden to come, 
and from Paradise Lost we learn how it must be 
regained. Form is forever. What we are we must 
appear. The time is at hand for the wilful man to 
give up his will, the proud man his pride, the miser his 
avarice, the sensualist his baseness, and all to be 
formed anew by the Spirit of truth. But that spirit is 
in us only as it comes out, to prove us ever in it. 



IX. 
VALUES. 

SO much creed as this we must hold, that the world 
is worth making. One doctrine is intolerable, that 
the universe is imposture, and life a curse, that all is 
wrong and there is nothing but would better not be. 
Let us listen to the Sadducee and the infidel, the atheist 
and the materialist ; but wherefore should the pessimist 
speak, have his portrait taken or his theory entertained ? 
There are hard places and sore extremities for Hamlet's 
soliloquy to occur to any man ; but by all creatures 
together it cannot be pronounced ! We are let down 
into pits deeper than Joseph's ; but the cord does not 
break, and at length we are drawn up to ask forgive- 
ness for our doubt. If we query about there being 
aught in ourselves that deserves continuance, we do 
not question so concerning our race. Some members 
of it we insist it were a crime in heaven not to immor- 
talize. All excellent men confess their debt to good 
women ; and I think the conviction of benignity at the 
centre springs alwaj^s from such acquaintance. They 
suggest opulence, as a physician said a true nurse fills 
the room. I met a deep-bosomed, great-hearted sis- 
ter, to whom I had rendered, in her sorrow or joy, a 
(206) 



VALUES. 207 

service infinitely larger in her memoiy than in fact, 
and so to be requited by her magnifying affections a 
thousandfold. But I saw in her friendly motions not 
gratitude alone, but an outbursting good-will that 
craved its objects eve^where. Her love was uneasy 
without perpetual exercise. It was said Napoleon 
must have all Europe for his camping-ground or be 
driven back to gnaw his own heart. So this kindly 
soul must keep its theatre of benefits ever open ; and 
I was sorry I did not surfer her to take me in her car- 
riage and drive me on my errands, such a denial of her 
own happiness my refusal seemed to be ; like the man 
in Scripture, whose fields brought forth plentifully, she 
had no room where to bestow her goods ! Such a per- 
son stands for Providence. It needs no other argu- 
ment than this bounty incarnate. No wonder she could 
rush into the deep and rescue drowning men ! To cer- 
tain persons tired of impertinent importunity a friend 
said, I see in the ocean of your goodness there are 
soundings. But there is infinity in human love. 

The value of a thing is its use, what it can be sold 
or bartered for ; and what has in the market no such 
gauge we call invaluable. We speak of the value of a 
home or good name, of our institutions, government, or 
religious faith. How much in our possession can have 
no sensual reckoning ! We cannot eat a piece of carved 
stone or of bronze ; we cannot wear an oil-picture or a 
banner ; we could not sell Bunker-hill Monument. Eng- 
land would not for it pay a cent ! Nobody, up or down 
the street, wants to buy the babe to which your life and 
fortune are pledged. 

A man is measured by his scale of values. It was 



208 THE RISING FAITH. 

asked, respecting the granite shaft, What is it good 
for ? and Mr. Everett answered, What is anything good 
for, and does anything do any good? Patriotism, he- 
roism, self-sacrifice, are intrinsic goods. In the soul is 
worth that puts all else, death itself, under foot. The 
stars wheel round and shoot at it arrows of light only 
in seeming superiority ; and time draws out its endless 
piles, like ruined stretches of a Roman aqueduct, in 
vain. Things but pretend to be its masters, and it 
only appears to be their slave. We must take things 
as they come and make the best of them is a mean prov- 
erb. Rather the soul makes and predetermines all 
things, and turns every element into its servant. It 
was no profane speech when Louis Napoleon said of 
the overflowing and destructive Seine and Rhone, Sci- 
ence must teach the rivers to know their bounds. Our 
command of things is concurrence with their laws. The 
English are said to be drying up rivers by imprudent 
drainage, for irrigation, of the swamps that are the 
slow feeders ; and Americans by reckless clearing of 
immense north-western woods have opened a path for 
waves of polar cold, against which the forests were a 
shield. So the transcendental theory of our making the 
climate comes true, as by crossing and culture we make 
breeds of cattle and new species of flowers and grass. 
We choose our own weather as we decide from the signs 
what spirals of the storm and billows of the sea we will 
encounter or avoid. If the balloon shall cany passen- 
gers through the air above, as well as the lightning 
messages under the sea, it will be but another triumph. 
For the history of races and the study of our frame 
inform us that we are not only co-workers but self- 



VALUES. 209 

creators with God. We settle, by onr dealing with 
sex, the sort of inhabitants for the planet in ages and 
generations to come. Self-made man? It is a self- 
made mankind ; and, after freeing the slave, and right- 
ing the woman, we may hope to discover the value of a 
human being at last. 

The artist has values, of color and form, for his 
picture ; and man's faculties are the values for this 
panorama of the world. We are its appraisers. If 
the mountain be to Bun but a squirrel-track, and the 
primrose but a yellow blossom to the boor, till their 
inventory is changed, their estimate must remain. I 
must ask of everything, Does it serve my turn ? The 
sea is to its finny tribes a fish-pond, the flats a home 
for the flounder and eel ; the beach or ice-cake for the 
seal a basking-ground, and the crags to the chamois a 
garden-walk. 

" While man declares, see all things for my use, 
See man for mine, replies a pampered goose ! " 

And it were as easy to alter its opinion as that of any 
other feather-head. Main force of authority will only 
bruise the brain-cells ; and pushing our creed against 
capacity to accept it is another shape of Mohammed's 
sword. A tree takes from soil and air its needful 
food ; and certain persons by too much enriching 
killed a magnificent oak. Guano must be sprinkled 
with a sparing hand. It is some person's misfortune 
to be cultivated more than their talents can bear, till 
their whole intelligence is plagiarism and a lie. If the 
course of instruction fit not the nature, it hurts. 
Father Taylor thought it a pity Dr. Channing had 
14 



210 THE RISING FAITH. 

not been educated, he had such a splendid mind! 
The Bethel-preacher rated not Cambridge so high as 
the college of experience and university of events. 

It is part of wisdom to reckon others' genius and 
temper right. I would make greater account of you, 
O friend, my kith and kin, if I could ! If } T ou are but 
partner or boon companion, to pass my time, I cannot, 
with any groans or sacrifices, convert you into an 
inspiring soul. A type is as unalterable as a tile. 
The acorn will come up an oak, if at all. One thistle 
or briar may be brought into brighter blossom or finer 
perfume ; but the thorns will not be abolished nor any 
fruit appear, although a process of fire or flood dis- 
close germs of better things. Call not caprice my 
incapacity to think of you better or otherwise ; I can- 
not alter }~our weight in the scales or your girth b} r the 
tape. What we are to each other is the fatal fact. I 
ask of sun and moon, and as curiously of sickness and 
death, what they can do for me ; and, of my fortune, a 
mone3^-diviclend is not the sole return. The school, 
institute, museum, students' hall has for the donor no 
quarterly pay-day ; but the stocks are poor that yield 
not satisfaction for character, however splendid in the 
market the investment. Well do we call worldly goods 
means; to clutch them is to gather no honey, in our 
care of the hive. 

B} r the same question theism must be tried. Is 
your God a serviceable deity ? A divinity independent 
of his offspring, under no obligation, blessed absolutely 
in himself, able to destroy as to create, to extinguish 
the universe and feed on his own glory, a solitary 
consciousness, with naught but offended jealousy left 



VALUES. 211 

over the ruins of nature and tomb of mankind, were 
worse than none ! Atheism is better than this theo- 
logical lie ; for atheists are benefactors to rub and beat 
piety out of its malformations, as by blows and elec- 
tric shocks some rough practitioners restore a distorted 
frame. But how, with every step of science, motion 
of thought and transport of communion, the adorable 
Ona vindicates himself from slanders behind his back, 
and by ever more manifest unity rids us of the chaos 
which else existence would be ! His light from every 
centre makes the shadows none too heavy for the back- 
ground of the picture, and bids beauty rise on the 
canvas even from colors of blood ; while ecstasies of 
trust, deeper in refined society than in any wild desert 
or monkish cell, prove that no petition is laid on his 
table for neglect. He puts himself on his record ! He 
is his value to me ; and in vain you tell me he is more 
than I think. He is my thought beyond which I can- 
not get, but of which my wonder is part ; for I wish 
not only to apprehend but to stand in awe ; and, as I 
tremble at the deeps of being, find joy and fear to be 
the same. Handsome presents alone from him I do 
not crave. For unconditional favor I have no thanks. 
This veneer of universal salvation and smoothing- 
plane of unbounded grace I despise. Let the Lord 
loose his terrors in my conscience of right and sense 
of desert ! When I am complacent to injustice and 
cruelty, uncleanness and fraud, let the Deity I serve 
be so ! But, till then, I admire his thunder, and watch 
with delight the bolts that pierce palaces, and fell 
pharisaic iniquity, and rend my own flesh. He has 
but the range of my idea. Stairs to heaven or steps 



212 THE RISING FAITH. 

to hell for a bed, or the uttermost sea to fly to, are 
only, as I so imagine, part of his abode. 

Somewhere, between his personality and mine, must 
the line be drawn ? Impossible by the Infinite or ray- 
self ! Thomas Jefferson, being rallied on the subject 
of dignity in official form, affirms himself unconscious 
of any difference of feeling in writing to the humblest 
or highest of his race, — a sentiment surpassed by 
nothing in his famous Declaration. Where my author 
ends and I begin can never be told ! " Whom I shall 
see for myself," saj^s Job. Will you point to the pious 
register? Though it come in folios of sacred books, I 
must adopt it, or it is nought. I am auditor of the 
account, ^whoever kept it, Moses or Paul ; and they 
must write errors excepted at the bottom of their page. 
David's psalm has its prosperity in my ear. I am 
judge if his harp be out of tune ; when the chords 
ring with health, or sob on the minor key of grief and 
remorse. 

A certain valuation we must make of our own mind. 
Gold, brass, pinchbeck, lead, are figures we freely use 
to describe the human qualities. Every soul is a house, 
its powers the occupants and its acquisitions the goods, 
whose sum passes the skill of an}- administrator, asses- 
sor or consignee. From a particular habit or direction 
prejudice arises for or against one sort of talent or 
special pursuit ; and natural science, knowledge of 
the material world, seems now to have got to the head 
of the class, till we are assured nothing but matter in 
some form exists. The understanding for king, and 
the senses for cabinet, make our court, at the bar of 
whose conclusions all else is summoned. In places of 



VALUES. 213 

learning physics crowd the classics out ; how things 
are made being held of more concern than what in any 
or all tongues, has been said of them. Place for the 
Naturalist and Mathematician ! But, in the audience, 
shall they have the first hearing, at the board the 
highest seat? Let it be as Bacon said, a question of 
utility, only let us construe use in a generous way ! 
How, at your table, is what is best in me strengthened 
and fed ? Your dish of facts and diet of laws suffice 
not to satisfy my taste. I want pictures and music at 
the feast. 

' 'And beauty, born of murmuring sound, 
Shall pass into her face." 

" We are debtors to the flesh not to live after the flesh," 
but to cheer each other with greeting and conversation 
while we eat ; and to be omniscient of details or om- 
nivorous of books is but the gormandizing of the mind. 
If I confine myself to prying into the method of God or 
nature, I indulge a single appetite, miss a broad culture, 
and end not in realities, but words ; and as respects 
nutriment, of all things logic has the least. My friend 
laughs at the Bible-stories and calcines them with his 
criticism, till they seem, like substances in a retort or 
under a blow-pipe, to pass in vapor and smoke. 
But I get hungry in his laboratory ! He has analyzed 
and dissipated the bread of life, till none is left. Noth- 
ing remains. He has only his experiment on which I 
cannot be sustained ; and I begin to suspect he has 
made some mistake in his so acute disposal of Moses 
and Abraham and Ruth and Job. 

But must not every tradition be subjected to the test of 



214 THE RISING FAITH. 

reason ? Indeed it must ; } T et he is a monster of reason, 
and not a rational man who has succeeded in reducing all 
his faculties to one and that the inquisitive or sceptical. 
In his clear philosophy is no food. Freedom is our claim . 
But of what shall we be free? Of all association 
with the past, and old heir-looms ? Our liberty were a 
mental void ! It would be like the room in the parable, 
empty and swept, but not garnished. It would be the 
Louvre or Dresden without the paintings and statues 
that tell of every age and style of art. Rather be our 
breast a suite of galleries and corridors echoing with the 
tread of generations as they gaze at the sketches of time. 
The religion of Jesus, says a late author, is the religion 
of nature ; but away with all the commentaries ! Nay, 
the commentaries are an action of human nature on his 
speech, more precious than all his words ! He, that 
limits himself to the business of an advocate or adver- 
sary, to prove or disprove, subdues his energies to one 
narrow and barren line. Christian and freeman may 
not be the same ; but the synonym for libert}- is not 
Anti-Christ enslaving himself to the proposition that 
Christianity is tyranny, and none can be allowed to 
call it anything else. We cannot reduce our native 
tendencies to one lowest term. Science will never 
abolish literature, nor verity displace beauty, nor good- 
ness, that river of God, give way to art adorning its 
banks. Let us beware of partiality ; for in vain is the 
old commandment kept, and the graven image broken, 
if we bow down to some notion, and worship ourselves. 
Is there any security? We are told, by careful 
investors, of solid stocks they rely on, till from some 
volcanic centre rushes the tidal wave. We talk of 



VALUES. 215 

real estate ; but the ground opens and cliffs rock on 
the shore with the panic in the town. An excellent 
woman wishing, some half-century ago, to have her 
funds so placed that with regular certainty she could 
draw, was advised to divide them, against possible 
failure, into three portions : the first in the Newbory- 
port turnpike, the second in the Middlesex Canal, and 
the third in the Charlestown Bridge, which had the 
pledge of the State. The Commonwealth declined to 
redeem its honor in pawn, and the Lowell and Eastern 
railways left the hilly turnpike and slow canal behind. 
But beauty is no fleeting vision, honor no dissolving 
view, goodness no stray beam, and love no failing 
spring. 

"The dearest treasure mortal times afford, 
Is spotless reputation; that away, 

Men are but gilded loam or painted clay." 

Character is the diamond that scratches every other 
stone. In the circles of business is a list of traders 
with their several credits by some committee assuming 
authority, set down as on a sliding-scale. But there is 
another unwritten catalogue, whose enumeration is 
just as familiar in men's mouths, on which the last may 
be first. 

What will a man take for his soul ? He will take back 
pay ! Our representatives deal with the guilty money as 
persons did with the umbrella tied by a secret string to a 
hotel door, which every guest, as he left, took as if it be- 
longed to him ; but at the end of the string, dropped it, 
without looking round, while the owner sat behind and 
smiled ; or like the shoppers to whom the teller, for an 



216 THE RISING FAITH. 

experiment, gave on purpose from the till a few cents of 
over-change, which most of them looked at furtively, 
and slipped with an innocent expression into some wal- 
let or fob. But how the public conscience-monej^ 
burned in the pocket and stung like a hornet ! Watch- 
ing the uneasy motions of the legislators, is a comic 
and pathetic sight. At various intervals of time come 
into Capitol refusals to take the additional sum to 
which they had no more title than a carpenter or 
road-builder to go back on you for double the dollars 
agreed. In other instances, the amount taken is 
returned. A third class think to transmute this plunder 
into gold by giving it away, making the Treasury their 
alms-box ! The boisterous agitator and engineer of 
any immoral measure, may affect to be a delegate of 
the populace ; he represents the pit. Plenty of vile, 
of villains, but they are not the majority ; not the 
human race ; and he, who supposes they are so, will find 
out his mistake. A woman, tempted by an enormous 
bribe to sell her estate to extend the premises of a 
hotel, rejected the offer on the ground that intoxicating 
liquors were sold at the bar ; like the heroine, who, 
when the bolt of the door, enemies stormed at, was 
missing, put in her own arm ! How refreshing every 
new illustration of this anti-sceptic of the soul, better 
than chloride of lime, or powdered charcoal, or the Cali- 
fornia air ! 

But the treasure must be our own. Let us not think 
to climb to the main-top through the lubber-pole of 
authority ! Over the door of the spiritual counting- 
room blazes No Trust, without the vouchers or gold 
certificates in the vaults of the breast. 



VALUES. 217 

The credit s} T stem has been carried too far with 
prophets, apostles, redeemers and priests. Several 
kinds of wheat ground together make the best flour. 
So Greek, Syrian, and Scandinavian grains mix in 
the bread of life. We question whom we will call 
Christian. What does your Christianity signify ? When 
it is popular in the church to hush up scandal against 
its members, and with false mercy to hide offences 
against sanctity ; when pride of orthodoxy passes over 
spots on robes unclean, which should, like the old He- 
brew garments, tainted by the flesh, be hated and cast 
into the fire ; when captivating ability makes hypocrisy 
current in the exchange of Christendom ; when in sym- 
pathy of conscious guilt, the secular conspires with the 
sacred press to condone sensual iniquity ; when the 
prevalence of some particular sins makes suppression 
of the facts the policy of safety, as cases of cholera or 
small-pox are withheld to prevent the neighborhood's 
alarm ; when those that describe are condemned be- 
yond those who commit the crime ; when a female fel- 
lowship under holy banners pardons unholy men, and 
the atonement is perverted into an excuse ; then slow 
suspicion, drifting in like a fog above the headlands, 
will wrap all the dedicated places and solemn names ; 
and we must call to the rescue whatever unprofessing 
fidelity still maintains decency or keeps the moral law, 
and make sincerity our communion-board ! If for 
Jesus we must have the Jesuit, let us strike for savage 
virtue, as wild berries are better than unwholesome, 
deca^'ing fruit. When I meet a man so true he has no 
behind-my-back, but is an evangelist with glad tidings 
and greetings at the front door, I never ask to what 



218 THE RISING FAITH. 

denomination he belongs. The soul needs no creden- 
tials. Its evidence is itself. I care not by what 
method ! I ask not what hell-fire you are saved from, 
but what heavenly goodness you are saved to. There 
are persons like locomotives, sliding about at a station, 
warning us. at every track to keep out of the way ; 
there are persons that bridle as colts and bristle like 
porcupines ; and there are those who overcome us like 
a summer-wind, sinking into every pore, beneath all 
our organs, with balm for deeper hurts. They are the 
elect, it matters not about the plan. Not imputed 
but real righteousness can pass. Sayest thou, O David, 
blessed is the man whose sin is covered? Nay, rather 
accurst ! 'Tis false to speak of its cover ; it is pub- 
lished somehow plainer than any bulletin on the board 
or placard on the rock. Drunkenness and profligacy as 
well as murder will out ! Religion is but a great 
white-washing business in the popular creed. Washed 
and made white in the blood of the Lamb ? Our self- 
ishness, fraud, impurity, looks blacker than ever in 
that blood. It will not wash white any sins it does not 
wash outj The cup and platter look fouler within 
when onl} 7 the outside is made clean. 

The soul is never on the list of stocks or advertised 
at auction. We have ceased from the purchase of 
human bodies as slaves. But no property quoted, 
Erie or Pacific, so sure as the soul to have its rate at 
the brokers' board, in the gold-room or on the block. 
When truth is venal, and a man will lie for so much ; when 
honor is in the market waiting for a bid ; when man's 
loyalty or woman's chastity is not sterling, then the 
soul is no longer an absolute value. It is reckoned 



VALUES. 219 

and appraised. Every man has his price? Then date 
not the fall of man back to Eden, put not transgression 
on the shoulders of Adam and Eve ! The fall is here 
and now ; the curse is pronounced to-day, and the 
flaming sword waves on the walls of a Paradise, whose 
occupant is driven out before our e} r es. 

Truth is the gem to which all that sparkles on the 
dress is dross and paste. Purity is the pearl put into 
no bracelet or ring. It is the soul, whose loss cannot 
be reckoned as you reckon fortunes swept away in a 
financial whirlwind or consumed in some terrific fire. 
It is said the ancients missed a star, one of the seven 
we call Pleiades, sparkling a setting of diamonds in 
the blue sapphire of the midnight sk}\ But the fall of 
such a star would raise less lament in heaven than when 
sincerity, honesty, a good name falls from the firmament 
of the humblest soul ! We talk of saving the soul. Have 
we any soul, among our possessions, left ; and how much 
that we dare call our own ? Soul, except as an article of 
merchandise, is not common. A man of soul we do not 
meet every day in the street. Soul is a certain sensi- 
bility to truth, honor and beamy, which the eye or ear 
or understanding cannot behold or contain. It is as a 
precious gum or amber which the richest growth of 
human nature is required to form and distil. It is the 
honey of a man in this hive of his body. It is the blos- 
som and bright consummate flower which this coarse 
stem of flesh has the privilege to unfold ; and we say 
justly of mean and selfish people that they have no soul, 
only a latent capacity, potentiality or possibility of soul. 
If you sell your soul the devil has got it, not } t ou ; and 
he scarce knows what to do with it. A man cannot 



220 THE RISING FAITH. 

appreciate what he lacks ; and any demonstration of it 
stirs his anger and scorn. " Neither cast ye your pearls 
before swine lest they trample them under their feet 
and turn again and rend 3-ou ; " for what can their 
filthy greed make of aught that is not to be bemired 
and devoured? Baseness does not believe in gener- 
osity, and libels every handsome offer as not made in 
good faith. 

Selfish people think all is selfish. They cannot con- 
ceive a generous intent. Thej^ impute munificence to 
mean motives, which they spy out. What is their ben^ 
efactor after ? His own interest somehow ! There is a 
cat in the meal, or infernal machine in the carriage ; 
which, once admitted on their premises, will blow them 
to pieces ; for to them the world, with its floor of rock 
and ceiling of stars, as it cleaves the eternal deep, is 
but a shop, and its inhabitants all hucksters. So Sa- 
tan's favorite trap is trade. How many are caught, 
till some great credit fails like the stopping of the main 
wheel in a mill, and the ruin overtakes all who have 
been unwary in their trust; as some Black Friday 
dawns with panic over the land, and neither gold nor 
greenbacks can be paid. Government aid is implored. 
'Tis interfering with a tornado and thunder-storm sent 
to clear and purify the commercial air ! Utter de- 
struction is feared ; but no such squall can wreck the 
common weal. The ocean is large ; leaky and unsea- 
worthy vessels founder or are overset ; rotten enterprises, 
rash undertakings and over-venturesome speculations 
burst or sink in the financial blast, as the great balloon 
was rent apart. But for such providential rebuke, 
greed of gain would go mad, and all conscience of right 



VALUES. 221 

among operators in stocks disappear. Disaster is God's 
messenger. Insolvency is the judgment-day. Woe to 
those whom the lightning feels after with the sentence 
of its sword ! But well for the community when the 
bolt falls ! When one was asked to subscribe money 
to save folks from going to hell, he replied, Xot enough 
of them go there now ! It is a sad commentary when 
our talk is only of unhappy consequences, and not of 
the sins of business from which they flow. So many 
millions of property have vanished ; but what, in the 
newspaper, is told of the sacrifice of truth and equity? 
Who has reckoned the waste of soul? We empha- 
size calamities, not crimes. But the prosperity of the 
country is not swamped. Bright spots, which we call 
Fairs, all over New-England, are proof that, however 
many swindle, more produce ; and, with all honest labor 
of hand or brain, the hope of a nation thrives. 

On the worth of the soul our toiling fathers stood. In 
their thrift they chose sandy wastes for their burial- 
grounds. But out of the barren enclosures what im- 
mortal expectations rose ! The soul is not obsolete. 
We know the lovers and believers of our kind. We 
know the true-hearted and sincere. It was written of 
the Eoman Coriolanus : 

11 His nature is too noble for the world ; 
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, 
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth ; 
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent ; 
And, being angry, does forget that ever 
He heard the name of death." 

Of yet grander stamp I imagine a religious man. He 



222 THE RISING FAITH. 

leans on no external things. He dissolves everything 
into a thought. He smiles at the trifles men contend 
about. He drops all dispute. He aims at no victory 
out of himself. He has no doubt of his destiny ; for 
immortal life is not a question, but a property of the 
soul. The French Joubert is described as a soul which, 
having come across a body, made the best of it. To 
every living spirit the fleshly organs are but temporary 
tools. 

In investments we esteem values that do not fluc- 
tuate ; not up to-da} r and down to-morrow. Many 
species of property hardly trembled in the blast while 
the North Pacific and Western schemes tumbled with 
a crash. But all the bonds and mortgages will go by 
and by ! The soul, all we have of it, will stand by us 
and go with us. In an old Scandinavian legend we 
read that the king and his warriors were in a long 
dark hall around a fire. It was night, and in the winter 
time. Suddenl} r a little bird flew in at one door and out 
by another. The king said, That bird is like man on 
the face of the earth ; he flies hither out of the dark, 
and he only stays for a moment in the light and warmth. 
Sire, answered the oldest of the warriors, the bird is 
not lost in the dark, he will find his nest. The soul is 
the bird ; it comes from and returns to the dark ; only 
dark to us with excessive light. It will find its nest ! 
Some recent English voyagers to Spitzbergen by chance 
carried with them in their cabin a swarm of flies, which 
the^y came to regard as companions from their far-off 
comfortable home. In the extreme Arctic cold the flies 
began to pine and stiffen and die. The sailors, touched 
with compassion for their little fellow-creatures, strove 



VALUES. 223 

to keep them alive by feeding them with sugar and 
putting them in the warmest place in the sun on the 
window-pane. But at length the last one turned over 
on his back from his tiny feet and gave up the ghost. 
The men said, to explain their nursing care, that they 
remembered they were but themselves a sort of flies, 
perhaps close to the same fate. But the soul is not a 
fly. It shall never stiffen or grow cold or fold up its 
wings. 

With some shame one presumes to treat such a 
theme. Talkers and writers run to words, as a poppy, 
to seed, with the same virtue to put people to sleep. 
Every one must see the picture for himself. My com- 
panion in the boat is not content with my telling him 
of the phosphoric blaze in the hot summer-night as the 
bow cleaves the smooth bay, but is justly eager to see 
it himself. Why climb to the main-top of truth through 
the lubber-hole of authority ? Why limit vision to any 
prophet or chosen race? I am glad to read the Golden 
Rule in Confucius too, as the florist rejoices to find in 
Arctic regions some familiar plant, and the English 
traveller wept over a violet in bloom near the Pacific 
Sea. Goodness is native in every land, and truth an 
exotic for no clime. The Lord gives a monopoly of 
his witnesses to no tribe. No Protective System is 
established* in his domain. Free Trade in goods or 
ideas must at last prevail ; and the branches overhang 
opposite continents from one root. 



X. 

VALIDITY. 

IN religion there are among us three parties m the 
field : Christian, Extra-Christian, and Anti-Chris- 
tian ; and these exhaust the subject. 

Our religion, as observed and established, has a 
value it is impossible to increase, and to defend the 
inheritance, to which we have a warranty-deed, is our 
whole duty ; or it is an antiquated superstition, an incum- 
brance on our property, like Turkey, "the sick man" ; 
or it is an estate to be altered and enriched, as we put 
new fertilizers into our field, or the modern improve- 
ments into a house ; a capital not to lie dead but 
changed, reinvested in a thousand forms, and run like 
blood in the social frame. The methodical way is not 
to begin squarely outside of Christianity, and end with 
impeachments against it. One need not refer to what 
he is alien from. He has no interest in a duel with it. 
His true logic were indifference. We are more indepen- 
dent of Great Britain than we were in the revolutionary 
war ; and the Israelites were freer of the Egyptians with 
the Red Sea rolling between. So, when a religion is done 
with, you will not talk about it. Yet destructiveness is 
not the character of any great man, — Moses, Mahomet, 
(224) 



VALIDITY. 225 

Socrates, Buddha, Jesus or Paul. The} r own the past 
which they come to fulfil. Greater offices belong to 
the plough and the seed than to the hammer or axe. 
Only to cultivate we clear ; nor has the soil of humanity 
or an}' prevailing growth in it ever been all thorns and 
stones. It argues a lack of the historic sense, of true 
scholarship, to fall foul of anything the human race 
has loved and lived on. Possession is nine points of 
the moral law. The window that overlooks your land, 
after twenty years you cannot build against ; and 
Christianity is a great window. Edmund Burke, dis- 
gusted with France, and delighted with the Feudal 
system, the chivalry of politics, that ga}' panorama of 
nobles and kings which was wrapped in such dire con- 
flagration, declared, Nothing is harder than the heart 
of a genuine metaphysician; and that metaphysical 
principles, applied to actual affairs, must, like sunbeams 
entering a denser medium, be deflected from their straight 
line. There are crises or cataclysms in the earthly and 
human evolution ; yet the community is a unit in 
measureless multiple, a f solid vital organism to grow 
and flourish ; and no more than an apple to ripen in a 
da}', or a bud to be pulled open with the hand. The 
chief contributors to modern thought, in their loyalty 
to the inspirations of the private soul, are not enough 
aware of this grade and continuity, and moving all 
together of mankind ; for the doctrine of Darwin is true 
of the mind and the species we belong to, as well as 
of animals and plants. The fittest ideas and qualities- 
survive. With what ill grace we kick at antecedents ! 
If you would have the lily, despise not the mud ! The 
past is the ground for one foot of progress ; the future 
15 



226 THE RISING FAITH. 

is in the air. Occupation of the ground is providence 
and strength. A discoverer in the name of some 
French, Spanish, English King, with a flag, asserts a 
right which ages wear not out, of eminent domain to 
continental territories. A band of pirates becomes a 
house of lords. Some twenty-five years ago a mouser 
among Boston titles brought an action against one 
estate whose success would have swept away a section 
of streets perhaps equal to the burnt district, as a 
common for the poor. Three-quarters of a century 
since an American citizen bought eight hundred thou- 
sand silver dollars' worth of Virginia lands, which in 
his absence, by default of protection, squatter sover- 
eignty, and the springing up of agriculture, factories, 
trade and towns, lapsed irrecoverably every inch. 
You cannot rip up the social system. "What holds the 
space has a certain right to hold it ; and Christianity 
is here as an appointed fact. The past is like the 
staging, for sawing which awa}' my careless carpenter 
fell into foolish incompetency to build. The archi- 
tecture of the beaver, the nest of the bird, the hole of 
the bank-swallow, the hive of the bee is no original or 
sudden skill, but the triumph after ages of additions, 
finer than any gem, ruby, diamond enlarges by, to its 
little brain. All generations are one man whose head 
is bigger and brighter to-day than ever in the planetary 
annals, — whatever exceptional weight or fineness in 
some single Caesar, Napoleon, Cuvier, it may have 
reached ; and the abstracted student, who tilts with 
such fury against previous or still existing low degrees 
and small deposits of intelligence, would tear himself 
from the soil, and, like children maternally reproved 



VALIDITY. 227 

for quarrelling with their victuals, he forgets the meat 
on which he has thriven. 

Honor the divine or human parentage, not only in 
the house and land, but in the faith and temper the} 1 - 
bequeathed. Not only liberty and independence are 
their legacy, but instinct and custom too. Respect not 
only the calculated but involuntary action of your own 
mind. Free-will? Individual, or society is a live 
automaton, conscious but under influence and control 
of far-fetched, long descended and irresistible springs. 
There is an immemorial wire-pulling, of mutual dispo- 
sitions and common aims, which is not our deformity, 
but grace to keep us in order from eccentric and erratic 
ways. The noble Dr. Follen carried the notion of free- 
dom so far that he defined conjugal love as a perpet- 
ually intentional giving, an offering ever on purpose 
laid on the shrine. Do we want such deliberately 
served altars? He that debates whether to shake 
hands, and revolves above me a patronizing eye, or 
confers an embrace, has distanced me, not approached. 
I feel nearer to one who does not recognize me. I 
love more an utter stranger or honest foe. Kiss not at 
all, if you have got to make up your mind to do it ! It 
is a cold salute which no beauty of man or woman can 
make welcome. The hands, the lips, the eyes must 
fly without design and irrepressibly, which mine rejoice 
to meet. Out with your staid and measured and wilful 
affections ; the greeting must be in the blood ! Holy 
pre-cletermination is inspiration. What care we for 
your idiotic idios^mcrasies and originalities? He is 
eccentric ? Let him take his eccentricity away ! I 
honor the centric. I care for your fellowship, for the un- 



228 THE RISING FAITH. 

divided claim of humanity we generously own together, 
for hearty sympathy and cordial common sense, for God, 
the common of our souls : and worship, like manners, is 
of this the common tongue. It is curious that the 
loudest professors of liberty, who plant themselves on 
their own peculium, make as mechanical an impression 
as the official priest, because they separate themselves 
from those fountains of nature which refresh every 
person, pour on all our wheels of motion, and deliver 
us from being drudges an}' more. Thanks for not only 
what we can will, but has been willed to us, for the 
testamentary provisions and dispositions ! I delight 
less in what I have done or acquired, of an}' suppos- 
able virtue or merit, than in the imagination which 1113' 
father and the sensitiveness which my mother bestowed. 
I must be a faithful trustee : but the excellence is 
spurious which I made ! Not of virgin gold, from 
Nature's veins, but his pinchbeck composition does a 
man boast. Why do I like you? For that nobility in 
you, no credit to you only your privilege to maintain. 
You never fashioned your own charm, and a religion 
cannot be constructed. Like a constitution it must 
grow, as ours has done into new amendments, to reg- 
ister the swelling proportions of the body politic. 
This joint procedure is our glory, if not closed against 
inflowing force. It makes me muse on greater things 
in the might of human habit, when the muscles of the 
Railway conductor's arm, from practice quicker than his 
eye, move towards me as to the other occasional pas- 
sengers, though he knows I have a season ticket for 
my fare. Civilization advances beneficentl}', and the 
notion were foolish to change any whole system of 



VALIDITY. 229 

culture or manners, or public praise at once. Even 
slavery was abolished by degrees, and we owe the 
safety and felicity of the abolition partly to the brake- 
men on our headlong philanthropy, as well as to the 
glorious engineers. Our debt is to* Garrison and Lin- 
coln, yet somewhat to Webster and Seward, and even, 
though against their will, to Davis and Toombs. 

You would do away with Christianity. Its room is 
better than its company ! What have you to put in its 
place? No criticism, no negation, no philosoph}^ till 
3^ou have persuaded society to adopt and travel on 
some road-bed }'ou lay, can fill the awful vacuum which 
its sudden exile would make. Mr. Revere, soldier and 
sailor, describes his encounter, on the high seas, with 
that tremendous kind of billow rising from an earth- 
quake or electricity, called a bore. But for his ship's 
high bulwarks, the racing liquid mountain would have 
clashed his, as it did other vessels, like a foam-bubble, 
to the deep. Though a new island, or continent of 
truth, should appear as the consequence through the 
boiling main, what a void of destruction must attend 
the summary disappearance of a concrete fact, like 
Christianity, which, with all its groundless assump- 
tions and obsolete absurdities, and every proud con- 
tribution of radical thinking, still best represents in 
the foremost nations of the globe what sanctity and 
trust, and piety and hope, and zeal and love are still 
in the world ! 

Yet this medal has another side. As the iceberg, a 
mile in girth, drops from the pole to roll and split and 
melt, so doubtless Christendom undergoes change, is 
steadily assimilated and absorbed. A great swallow 



230 THE RISING FAITH. 

and digestion the whole Humanity has ! Nothing so 
grand in a gospel or revelation, — it cannot take down 
and dispose of. Because we are appropriating the re- 
ligion, getting what there is in it out into ourselves, 
and combining it with other things, therefore vanishes 
the old overawing form. We are liquidating this draft 
on the human soul. Not a cent of it will be lost, be- 
cause it does not, as some stupidly insist, sum up all 
our riches. It will accomplish its object in passing 
into other shapes. No individual redeemer is so great 
as man ; no plan so wide as life ; no word of Bible or 
conception of seer lasts so long as Heaven's eternal 
intent. 

The Church is the archive ; the Scripture the title- 
deed ; but the probate is not all of one book or in one 
place. There are flaws in every record and defects in 
all holy books. The Mosaic Law recognizes no obli- 
gation of truth ; one of the ten commandments forbids 
false witness on the ground of its injury to a neighbor ; 
but veracity, enjoined for its intrinsic beauty, we do 
not find : and in the New Testament, with its fine 
spirit, no doctrine of liberty on the strength of which 
we could unbind the captive ; no emancipation but 
subservience proposed for woman ; no rights of animals 
affirmed ; no settlement of temperance, though the 
drunkard be denounced ; no exposition of the prin- 
ciples of peace and war, free trade or protection, usury 
or labor, education or art, in its manifold forms and 
relations of utility and beauty to the common weal. 
The clay is not so plain as that we are thrown upon 
reason and conscience and our own hints. Withal we 
take in the religion, but the religion not us. It is im- 



VALIDITY. 231 

possible to recover the first discipleship. It is hunting 
for the morning-star at noon-day. Christianity is not 
a fixture but a flow, in Goethe's phrase, a change-contin- 
uance, a river of God, full of water; but no two per- 
sons, far less generations, bathe in or drink from the 
same stream. The column of smoke from the chimney, 
or vapor from the hill, or whirl of powdery snow I 
saw on an Alpine peak, in the Austrian T3T0I, shifting 
each moment its particles while retaining its shape, is 
a faint type of this perpetual dissolving of texts ever 
interpreted and applied anew and modified past calcu- 
lation by the atmosphere of the time, which Greek 
Church or Romish cannot withstand. Was the cake of 
field-ice, which some mariners floated on, the same in a 
different latitude ? 

But why lament the change ? It is a transfiguration 
more glorious than amazed Peter and James and John. 
The Sabbath was made, and Saviour sent, for man. 
Gaze not with Persian idolatry on the sun ; but use it 
as a lamp for your feet ! Will you prefer the individ- 
ual teacher to his object, as if he were more than truth, 
more than God, more than man, more than the soul? 
He came to preach integrhv^, to promote goodness ; 
and, having done his work, went. " And they knew 
him and he vanished out of their sight." When he 
retired he was revealed. His going was his coming 
that second time you wait for still, and more effectually 
to a second sight : for we see three w^s ; with our 
eyes, like brutes or fools ; through our eyes w T hen we 
think ; and without our eyes as we are inspired. Only 
the last is vision ! We behold our Master as one 
among many, though chief. In the adoration of Jesus 



232 THE RISING FAITH. 

as a fetich or finalny, the end he lived and died for is 
disowned and in definitions of faith and schemes of 
atoning blood the standard of righteousness is lost. 
Shouting for the captain the officers forget to hold the 
flag straight ; and as it leans in their hands, something 
beside loyalty to one's light becomes the ticket to 
heaven. Honesty is at a discount and hypocrisy above 
par in the market of the church. ~By all kinds of 
evasions and deceptions how ecclesiastics defend the 
ordinances and theories that correspond to no virtue 
or fact, keen with a phrase, and quick to wink at a 
crime, till the worldling finds his warrant in the allow- 
ance of the priest ! We are even told that some men 
would be benefited by sinning, and that a wax-like 
perfection may be beautiful, but is sickly-looking and 
inhuman. O, we read too much between such lines ! 
It is not be3 T ond divine power to bless a human fault 
to our instruction, to braid into beauty the dark with 
the brighter lines of our being ; to humble Peter with 
his false denial, and turn, for the rest of his mates, the 
cowardice of an hour into the heroism of their life. 
When Theodore Parker said he was glad to hear that 
Washington swore, it may have been because he was 
impatient of this patriotic myth, stalking so stately 
across the American political stage. Jesus is dram- 
atized as an actor, dressed as a lay-figure, clothed with 
a consciousness of office, as a public functionary, with 
the weight of nations on his shoulders, and publishing 
his importance as a Messiah to all time. Doubtless he 
w^as as natural and familiar as any friend, and would 
not be a Christian or understand Christianity if he 
appeared now, but a loving and noble person, illus- 



VALIDITY. 233 

trating unawares all he said in what he did. But 
what a stretch of optimism is it to sanctif} r vice before- 
hand with a lesson in the temple, and to haul perfec- 
tion, in its admitted beauty, to the bar ; to acquit the 
criminal and condemn the saint, as on a principle of 
spiritual law ! What indulgences for sin worse than 
Romish will be so implied ! Dr. Channing told me he 
remembered some transgressions, not very heinous, in 
his youth, for which he thought he was a better man. 
But he did not commit them by anticipation for their 
supposed efficacy to so gracious a result. Nothing, 
not even a frankly wicked example, is more demoral- 
izing than a dogma, to vindicate open or hidden in- 
iquity, from the desk. 4 

It is a delicate and difficult business to be a saint. 
We must somehow hit that mark without aiming at it. 
We must be good yet not know that we are, as Jesus 
denied and resented the name, and could not bear con- 
scious merit. Is he our friend at court, so that we are 
saved and loved for his sake ? If I am not saved and 
loved for my own sake, let me be hated and lost ! One 
thing I cannot give up to any assumed primogeniture ; 
and that is m}- place in the family, though I be the 
infant last born. If I be a bondsman, and no child, 
I will cry out, louder than Prometheus chained, against 
this worse than human slavery, whose example is set 
by God, and say to the Almighty himself, " Give me 
liberty or give me death ! " If I am not free of the 
household, I will have nothing to do with the house. 
The soul, so long a minor or a slave, has come of 
age, and knows that it alone, beyond all proxy or 



234 THE RISING FAITH. 

representative, is constituent and has rights which 
Heaven is bound to respect. 

Spirit is all ; without it matter is nothing. TTe pro- 
ject our religion. What is the world to me but an 
affection of my mind ? The book of inspiration closed ? 
Nay ; it never was opened, that infinite volume ! All 
flows, said the Greek; but who shaft discover the 
fount of this sacred Nile ? 'Tis an eternal deep and 
everlasting flux, older than any outward thing. TTe 
call this great modern bend of the current Christianity, 
as the Missouri becomes the Mississippi at a crook in 
the continent. But names import ! Some great soul 
starts eveiy enterprise, plants the new idea. Radicals, 
who protest loudest against leadership, never get Soc- 
rates and Jesus out of their mind. Clear 3-our prem- 
ises of old furniture which you prize not ! Hang on 
your walls no pictures of what the world has outgrown. 
But. while you recur to Jerusalem and Galilee, I shall 
know the images stay in your own despite ! To 
persuade me that the influence is gone I must have 
not your contradiction but 3-our unconcern ! When 
one said he should not have liked such an inquisitive 
man as Socrates very well, or even Jesus altogether, 
another answered, He is hard to suit. The soul is 
hard to suit with aught below beauty, invisible and 
without bound. Yet all the great religions have had a 
personal origin. None of them was born of an ab- 
straction. Every one was an incarnation. In my 
free-religious neighbor's window hang the Christmas 
wreaths ! It is the glory of Jesus that he stood for 
the soul. Who so much? He did not say, Let me 
see for you, and with my magic lantern throw the 



VALIDITY. 235 

picture down ; but, Come to the summit and look with 
me ! Mediator or medium betwixt, and I nryself not 
on speaking terms with God? I decline anything 
between ! We feel, touch and partake divinity. What 
is this doctrine of ghosts as apparitions? "Have you 
seen a ghost ? " The nature of a ghost is not to be 
seen. Not only is it not but it cannot be beheld. It 
is invisible, incapable of disclosure to sight. Who 
ever saw the Holy Ghost ? Spectre and spirit are not 
one. It is the most cunning trick of materialism to 
take spiritualism for its name, though there be celestial 
forms and transformings without end. 

But the mighty conductors of humanity never die. 
Napoleon, after his victories y hid himself in Paris, 
knowing his power would grow in the mystery of his 
being unseen. Josiah, the Jewish king, broke down 
the altars and burned the bones of idolatrous and adul- 
terous women and priests. But, coming to the sep- 
ulchre of a true prophet, he said, " Let him alone ; let 
no man move his bones ! " Even in the ashes the 
honor inhered. 

"Dear friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear! 
To dig the dust enclosed here : 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones." 

Stern was the Hebrew passion of revenge. Who of us 
would unbuiy and cast into the fire the bones of Arnold 
or Booth? What slaveholder but would thrill with a 
sacred awe at the sepulchre of John Brown? What 
holy water could consecrate the spot? What party in 
power would rake into the grave of Jackson or Lincoln, 



236 THE RISING FAITH. 

or Greeley or Seward? Perhaps the theory of the bod- 
ily resurrection of Jesus was invented to prevent dis- 
covery and adoration of his remains. If a bone were 
extant, how it would be adored ! It is the dignity of 
virtue that from a thread of its garment we cannot 
keep our worship and love. Exclaim against leader- 
ship ? Yet we gravitate to our superior, as the satel- 
lite cannot escape the sun. We are not the soul, but 
only poor part of it, and must revolve about who is 
more. " Cut deeper," said the French soldier to the 
surgeon ; " you will find Napoleon in my heart." Pity 
it w T as not a better idol ; but some idol the votary with 
no vision must have. The ideal Christ no science or 
criticism can displace. A spiritual model, a moral en- 
thusiasm is our deepest need. There is a part of our 
nature which no knowledge of facts or laws, only per- 
sonal devotion, can satisfy and absorb. 

" Only thou our leader be, 
And we still will follow thee" 

What walking cerebral prodigies and Dominie Sam- 
sons we should be, if to understand the construction 
of the world were our only aim, the whole being run 
to seed in our specialty of study, as sometimes a man 
seems to be only the other end of a microscope, or a 
gnome in a laboratory, or a worm in a book ! But, as 
one says, Seeing is not believing. We cannot live with- 
out faith. It is not the providential individuals we fol- 
low, save as they are pointers to some polar star. As 
we follow in a race or voyage for the goal or port ; as 
we follow Tynclall or Agassiz in an experiment or dem- 
onstration, so we copy some pattern of holiness and 



VALIDITY. 237 

truth ; and no abstract thinker can escape the law. 
Call the record in question, prove the legend or declare 
the miracles impossible or unproved, and that you can- 
not verify the credible facts ; still the divine idea, like 
a meteor plunging from the sky, is lodged in the human 
mind, buries itself in the heart, ploughs its way through 
history ; and Strauss, that eye-opener for the literal- 
ists, and Renan equally with Furness or Channing, do 
it reverence under utmost diversity of view. Mj^th or 
man, imagination or incarnation, it is immortal beauty 
that constrains our homage and obeisance ; and over 
some mental constitutions a picture in the light of 
thought, whatever mystic pencil drew it, has more 
power than any canvas ; for the real is not the circum- 
stantial or statistical ; it is the archet}'pe or pattern in 
the mount, or plan and painting in the breast, after and 
according to which all is drawn and done. It is not the 
flesh and blood you, sitting beside ine, that I love ; but 
my dream of you, }^our possibility, or the at present 
angelic impossibility I know you will become ; and he 
is but a pretended philosopher who holds this a bubble 
to prick, or nothing but smoke. It is blown with eter- 
nal breath, and rises from the far unquenchable fire. 
The artist takes not the gross expression in his por- 
trait, but catches the shy, revealing look ; and the hard 
urging on us of any definable historic individual as 
the only example, instead of this ideal, is profanity in 
the guise of piety. Desecrated by the British in 1775 
and 1776 is the inscription on the marble tablet, in 
Boston, of the Old South Church. Does the theologian 
think he may violate a greater sanctuary and trample 
on a purer shrine, as with his invading dogmas he sub- 



238 THE RISING FAITH. 

jects a child's liberty to think ? Not only is our thought 
sacred : nothing sacred in the universe beside ! It is 
God to us and God in us. You may call Feuerbach 
an atheist ; but his affirmation that there are not two 
beings, but one, alike ours and God's, and no separate 
or separable divinity, is the sincere religion, which 
every sort of dualism denies. 

We must have our thought of Jesus. Even he must 
submit to that solvent, which he has made more search- 
ing. If we find that his verbal portrait fills not, or 
anywise contravenes our conception of excellence, that 
he is not, as Pope says — 

" That faultless monster which the world ne'er saw" 

then we must stand by our perception, though the 
fanes of nations and high altars of ages fall. The 
river of God, his perennial communication must have 
room, whatever be crowded out ! Only }'our dam 
makes it rage and riot to ruin. Let it run, it will 
itself rear grace and safety for its banks ! But 
it differentiates every moment its deeps. No son 
of God can be religious for another. Our religion 
must be a fresh procession of the Holy Ghost. Even 
the glacier shifts its particles in its course down the 
mighty gorge. Like a huge icicle it grows and moves. 
Even the atoms of the rock dance. The pyramids 
stand ; but were not to Eg}^pt what they are to us. 
Nothing can stay! Everything must go. The Spirit 
says, Behold I make all things new. 



XL 
PERSONALITY. 

A NOBLE nature-worshipper says : I cannot deny 
it includes thee too in its pied and painted im- 
mensity. But, if I am included, it does not take much 
space ! Your parlor or my pulpit will suffice as well as 
a continent or solar system. Diogenes were included 
so in his tub, and impertinent to ask Alexander to get 
out of his sunshine. Thomas Browne was guilty of ex- 
travagance : 

• "His eyes dismount the highest star." 

Is the manager comprehended in the parts and prop- 
erties of his theatre ? Is the human actor taken in by 
the world which is all a stage ? I imagine the Acad- 
emy held not Plato, nor the palace Bonaparte, nor his 
closet Fenelon, nor the church Luther, nor the lecture- 
room the fine genius I quote. We part with spirit, 
lose immortality, and idolize place and time wherever 
we stoop to limits, or find in the elements our origin. 
We are capable of a devotion that mocks at accident, 
as did Shakespeare's love. Heine says, the old soldier 
of Napoleon, thinking he had committed the unpardon- 
able sin in presenting, by order, his bayonet to the 
(239) 



240 THE RISING FAITH. 

breast of the Pope, then a prisoner, remarked he had 
been through hell for his master in this world, and 
supposed he must also in the next ; but that if the 
little corporal had told him to run his weapon through 
the body of the Lord, he would have obeyed. This 
daring to cope with all obstacles and resist airy foe 
shows how will and fancy stretch ! Personality is the 
widest reach of nature and deepest secret of the mind. 
Are the tools without, which the carpenter puts forth 
his hands to, or are the}' and all the carpentiy within 
himself; and would he not smile at the notion that 
chest or house is more than he ? Shakespeare walked 
the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon and the boards of 
the Globe theatre ! Yet, but that we call him an 
Englishman, he is an influence that outweighs England, 
and the world could better spare that island than his 
books. All its population would be a smaller loss than 
the characters in his plays which live forever while 
men and reputations pass like shadows from Church 
and State. Broader than the earth's parallax runs his 
unseen personality, from Caliban to Hamlet, and from 
Audrey to Miranda. They were his imaginations all 
the more as they .were purged of his individuality. 
Caesar had no such realm not subject to revolution and 
mortal fate. The Lord must take pleasure in lighting 
up the earth with a soul whose conceptions blaze into 
all tongues and stream down many generations, and 
whose going out of flesh must have made some stir in 
heaven. In such energy nature appears but the train 
and appendage of man. But he that despises adoration 
makes her his fetish. Does the Indian think the trail 
he follows more than a footpath to his enemy or 



PERSONALITY. 241 

game, or the wigwam larger than the tribe? The ex- 
plorer's ship, caught in field-ice, crushed by icebergs, 
with its prow to the pole, is a larger figure to our 
thought than all the weary wastes of billow and 
frost. What do our sums, of millions, mean? More 
or less according to our inward grasp. 

On our idea all waits ; and that idea is no product. 
In some sense, I was born and must die. In some 
sense, my dwelling holds me ; your babe is in the crib, 
and your sires in the tomb. But there is an 7, by 
which all these contents and consignments are disal- 
lowed. Before Abraham was I am; I have power to 
lay doivn my life and power to take it again. I am 
conscious of Eternal Generation, that I am what never 
la}' in the cradle and no coffin can hold, but sits be- 
hind smiling at what was brought forth and expires. 
I know I must die ? That which knows cannot die ! 
The creature that has an end is not informed of it, 
and he that can entertain has escaped his doom. Does 
the owner add to his soil but a lump the more, or build 
his last mansion out of the six small planks? We 
shall all ring that bell, w T hich, to warn, of premature 
burial, was put into the hand of the corpse ! It is ab- 
surd to imagine obsequies for nry ideas. The least 
part of Talbot, in Shakespeare's drama, was in the room, 
the rest in the troops awaiting his call ; and I am in a 
host more mighty that I can whistle to my side. The 
capital of all creation is in pledge and pawn for each 
farthing. We are heirs of one in whom disinheritance 
were suicide. God is mortgaged to every child, if he 
be more than the old Saturn by whom his own offspring 
was devoured. The overweight is in the soul, not the 
16 



242 THE RISING FAITH. 

world. Columbus tempting the unknown sea after a 
Western hemisphere to balance the East, casts his shadow 
to the distant shore and belittles the continents he unites. 

Human unfolding is into personality ever more pro- 
nounced. Lost in deity? The more we are absorbed, 
the more we are found and find ourselves. The infant 
is confounded with other persons and things. But out 
of this baby imperfection is developed the character of 
Charlemagne, or Luther, reaching by differentiation its 
union with the Most High, as the root of a tree widens 
with its top. The insect, you crush, shrinks and tries 
to fly ; but has no horror as it gets out of harm's way. 
The man revolts at any term. From the inevitable he 
would not be constituted by a gracious Power to re- 
coil. Goodness would not create us to gaze all our life 
at our final goal ; and the sense of being enhances in 
proportion to the volume and variety of gift. Shake- 
speare declares no work so firm as to last with the 
rhyme of his lover's praise ; and Horace is sure he shall 
not wholly die. 

This is the curiosity of speculation, that a creature 
should, with its own, doubt its author's consciousness. 
Wliy say Him f asked one of her friend, personifying 
the great Cause. Not, was the answer, that it has 
gender, but being personal, I must personize my 
source. We are told it is a superstition in Christians 
to cling to personality in the object of their worship 
while disowning the Jehovah of the Jews, and that 
their Father must go with the Roman Jupiter and Zeus 
of the Greek, the Infinite One not being a person but 
an essence pervading the universe. But what is essence 
if not being and personality ? What is pervading but 



PERSONALITY. 2A3 

a travesty or translation into Latin etymology of walk- 
ing through? What is the Infinite bnt Spirit? But 
what is person? Person is life. Person is motion, 
from the faintest stir of the wind to the revolution of 
the skies. Person is sound, from the lowest whisper 
of a leaf to the surge of the sea and music of the spheres. 
Person is communication, from the smallest sign of 
sense and signal of nature, to the transports of elo- 
quence and the interior voice. Person is truth, from 
the acting of a dot after its nature, to honesty on hu- 
man lips. With an ej'efine enough we should see things 
grow ; with an ear fine enough we should hear the noise 
of a beam of light. Personality we cannot avoid till 
we outwit our parentage and escape ourselves. Mat- 
thew Arnold, in that new issue of his " sweetness and 
light/' called " Literature and Dogma," ridicules the 
doctrine of a great personal first cause as pure as- 
sumption incapable of proof, and proposes the power 
that makes for righteousness instead. Is Power uncon- 
scious ? Does it care for the righteousness, for which 
it makes ? To its tendency is it blind ? Not without 
a guidance does the ship make for port on the open sea. 
Not aside from some wisdom, which we trust more than 
rein or the tiller, do planet and comet hold their way. 
No game of blind man's buff do the thunderbolts play 
as they fly. With the Sweet reasonableness, is there 
some philosophic lack in our English author's charm- 
ing pen? Another Paley in his style, has he greater 
draught in his thought? The exquisite taste, that 
pleads for beauty, drops no deep-sea line ; and that 
enthusiasm, which is revolution and regeneration, is 
absent from his critical and contented page. 



244 THE RISING FAITH. 

Let all the doctors of impersonality understand that 
by the pronoun is no more meant a masculine God than 
a male devil. There is a thought, a love, a vision; a 
faith and hope for the future, a moral decision and 
action in the present ; and a duty of candor and sanc- 
tity in which is no sex, but equal obligation and an 
invariable call. In the Being which cannot be sub- 
divided and where all things and persons find their 
birthplace, generation is without gender. You tell me 
God is not personal. From the unconsoling statement 
how much do I learn? What else is he not? What 
more important quality can 3^011 eliminate? What is 
personality but the focus or burning-point where all the 
faculties meet, the concentration in which judgment 
and memory flame into genius, the grip wherein every 
ability is hurled to accomplishment ; the property, 
whose scale, with each new degree, is the measure of 
greatness? When Luther puts churches and king- 
doms into a new position, it is not by reason of more 
learning or information than other men, but a stronger 
personality to wield what he knew, flinging it at su- 
perstition and ecclesiastical perversion like a cannon- 
ball. Not by book-worms, pedants, or antiquarians, 
but mighty personages, has the world been pushed on ; 
and the human nature, they decorate and serve, honors 
them with the earth for their stage. When Cromwell 
dies, the land is shaken with a storm, a presage for the 
State. When Jesus expires, nature puts on mourning 
in a darkness for hours. He cannot go from those who 
would have made him king, but with royal obsequies, 
as for a creator of the world which allowed him so short 
a career. 



PERSONALITY. 245 

But we must refuse personality to our deity, because 
what is personal is finite? What is infinite then? 
Power is personality. Schopenhauer resolves the uni- 
verse into will, and there is no more common concep- 
tion than necessity or fate. Because things will be 
as they must, we are not to fear death on the ap- 
pointed or unappointed day ; for there is no virtue in 
the universe to shift it from the first or bring it on 
the last. The immensity, which we deny to person, 
shall we find in time g It is but the succession and 
sensation which some person notes and can abolish in 
exalted moods. Have that play of body and soul, 
which you call happiness or health, yield to the trans- 
port of eloquence, be entranced with a voice, exalted 
by a vision, engaged, in that jotting of celestial hints 
which we call composition, or the visit love makes to 
beauty, or enchained with the spell of land or sea which 
Mr. Webster said would hold him for hours ; and how 
time disappears ! 

:; TVe take no note of time but by its loss "? 

Xay, its absolute gain is in its entire obiivion. Schil- 
ler's test of superlative merit is its making us forget 
the clock ; and there is no such damper to a guest's 
enjoyment, or an orator's zeal, as any reference to it ! 
I have a friend so polite he is never in my house seen 
to take out his watch, but seems to know by instinct 
the moment he must go to catch the train. There is 
something, better than sidereal time, that sets all 
astronomy aside. The London chronometer in my 
pocket does not vary a minute in a month ; but no- 



246 THE RISING FAITH. 

body wastes more time than that gentleman whom 
Froclsham helps to keep it to a second, while, in wine 
and smoke and pleasure-trips, the years run away, } T et 
often hang heavy on his shoulders as they go. Only 
upon my vacancy or misuse as gaunt ghosts they in- 
trude. With my talents at interest and my affections 
in flow, the dates are gone, and no time-table is seen. 

Is the infinite, however, not in Person, but in Space? 
So writes John Locke. Two things, says one, are sub- 
lime, conscience and the stars. But how unfixed in 
essence, and accidental to the soul, is outward exten- 
sion, every microscope and telescope may prove. Is 
that boundless, any part or portion of which depends 
for its size and figure on a lens? How will it look 
when a different lens, from this glassy eye, is fitted to 
that other " machine" which shall be to us? Is that 
infinite, which shrinks or swells with our fancy, which 
we blow up like a bubble or throw down and break like 
a bauble, in our imagination and thought ? God is not 
in it ; but it is in God ! Nought is infinite but life and 
love. I will not put the theatre before the player and 
the play. 

What shall we dignifj' as knowledge ? The orderly 
position we can draw up certain facts in, as at a mus- 
ter or army-drill ? But has the feeling which we can- 
not shake off, of all this amazing scene and soul of 
things we are part of, no scientific worth? Then sci- 
ence is surface and a phrase, of cant terms the chief. 
The visible routine is but a rut or rail for our intellec- 
tual wheels ; and the s} r ren of our minds is no graceful 
figure, singing to the voyager by the rocks, but this 
external magnitude we yield to without right. For, 



PERSONALITY. 247 

when we speak of a country what do we mean? Not 
a geographic term for physical extent and the bounda- 
ries on the map, but the population which to the hills 
and lakes and sounding shores are but as animated 
mites or a handful of moving dust, less than ants in 
the sand. In the Franco-Prussian war, what was the 
Black Forest or the mountain-chain, to the brain of 
Bismarck plotting what the strategic pencil of Moltke 
drew? A possible nation, like the separate rods in the 
fable of JEsop, armed with executive genius, became a 
fagot, past the imperial strength of France or Austria 
to break ! Why should the intellect succumb to size ? 
All that is outward is but more or less of the finite ? 
I trust Mr. Tynclall does not think so much of the 
light, though it dart or wave from the sun, as he 
does of the intelligence that untwists and weaves 
again its threads, presses hard on its heels go where 
it will, measures so exactly the rate of its flight, dis- 
covers in darkness but a varying degree of its absence, 
and can extract the sunbeam from the clod, there being 
nought so dark or dense it ma}' not be made to emit 
radiance. I own, it is the experimenter, beyond the 
experiment, I admire. 

You refuse Personality as a designation? Is there 
wisdom and no one wise, goodness and no one gracious, 
beauty and no One All-Fair? Take out the Personal, 
you omit the transcendent. Wherever there is a man 
there is a God ; for we reject our own being with its 
root ! 

Furthermore, interest so attaches to all personality 
that by virtue of the selfhood none can be utterly bad. 
To be is to be good ; and there is no amount of error 



248 THE RISING FAITn. 

and vice that a living soul cannot stagger under. 
When Mozart's defects are hinted at, the musical 
teacher in Consuelo cries out how proud he were to 
have Mozart's faults ! This desert and claim of per- 
sonal being, Shakespeare, whom nothing was hid from, 
marks in "All's Well that Ends Well." Helen says 
of Par oil es : 

"I know him a notorious liar, 
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward ; 
Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him, 
That they take place, when virtue's steely bones 
Look bleak in the cold wiud ; withal full oft we see 
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly." 

Our word dissoluteness, to express want of worth, im- 
plies our regard for force of personal character. Not 
only is one dissolute who is destroyed by indulgence in 
sensual vice, but whoever becomes nebulous with nrys- 
ticism or with unprincipled sympathy sticks to all he 
touches like glue, or loses in any weak passiveness his 
own power to act or resist. A God devoid of this 
property would drop out of human respect ; for the 
men are held highest in honor who have it most ; those 
w T ho insist on improvement, the obstinate soldier who 
fights it out on this line if it takes all summer, the 
monk Luther, who cannot do otherwise than withstand 
the corruptions of Rome, the enthusiasts who not only 
muse, but horseback their enterprise and put their idea 
in gear, the apostles that turn the world upside down ; 
whoever changes the face of things, abolishes the base 
facts, and brings in new heavens and a new earth. 
There are persons in whom this agency is raised to the 



PERSONALITY. 249 

highest power, whose rare vigor compares with ordi- 
nary abilit}- like the clualn or nitro-glyeerine, one 
pinch of which is equal to a barrel of gunpowder, 
having an awful and unexplainable force, no science 
explaining the energ} T , known only in its explosion 
that lurks in the palid grains. These are the real 
czars and dukes which begin the dignities that end in 
titles and empty names ; and herein lies the reason 
against our sentimental view of a deity bent only to 
humor his offspring. Honest witnesses of life's expe- 
rience protest against the minister's commonplace that 
God is simply good. The perfect man is not simply 
good, but just too, an exactor of right, a tonic to 
brace us, a whip and spur when we flag, a fire in the 
refuse of our field, like the son of Agamemnon terrible 
to purify. God is good as he can be without self- 
contradiction and general wreck. For our own sake 
he fetches us to the ring-bolt of the moral law. Robert ( 
Hall, being asked for the best description of heaven, 
answered, " There shall be no more pain ; " but we 
ma} T be sure there is for the purpose none too much. 
"Words are counters drawn from our mortal feeling and 
lot, among them benevolence, to express the eternal 
mind ; but there is no word more dangerous than the 
loftiest one, love. God is love. Will you cover your 
license under that name ; with a white robe of sanctity, 
as a wedding-garment hide }'our shame, and let the 
ungirt goddess of pagan worship into the temple of 
your soul? That alone is personal which out of the 
infinite wind, blowing where it listeth, articulates some 
holy message. A mediaeval singer tells the bishops, 
he cares not for the heaven the}' promise and people 



250 THE RISING FAITH. 

with their like ! Why should he wish to go thither, 
with the muffs and dotards and cripples ; the sour, 
disabled creatures that serve the altar? Xo ; he 
prefers the other way to hell, where he will meet the 
poets and songsters, the heroes and brave captains 
that were the glory of this life, and whose deeds of 
nobleness have become the tale of time ; especially if, 
in escaping those austere celibates and masqued Iryp- 
ocrites, he can have the society of the woman he has 
loved. Robert Hall, sympathizing with the brave and 
sincere Priestley, thought himself a materialist too ; 
but, at his father's funeral, he asks, Is all of my father 
in the coffin awaiting a general resurrection after that 
of Christ ? Nature and instinct proved too strong for 
his creed, and he declares that he buries his material- 
ism in his father's grave. Never are we sceptics, in 
the exercise of strong affections, in the heart's flush or 
the mind's motion, or any great undertaking of the 
will. 

All the arts of expression are witnesses that the 
earth derives its interest from its inhabitants, and bor- 
rows more than it lends. Airy description of scenery 
makes impression and insures recollection not on its 
own account, but from its connection with what was 
done on the spot, the incidental import more than the 
direct. That " dark and bloody ground," in Kentuck}-, 
where savage and frontiersman strove, who, but for 
that fierce trampling of feet, would wish to know the 
look of? That local crossing, called Harper's Ferry, 
is put by John Brown's raid into the literature of the 
world ! Who cares for the beauty of the Virginia hills 
but for his remarking it as he was dragged to execution 



PERSONALITY. 251 

on the sheriff's cart ? Bunker Hill and Abonkir, Se- 
bastopol and Vicksburg, Richmond and Sedan, concern 

u> less as places than centres of political decision 
amid the shock of arms. The novelist, Scott or 
Dickens, must not sketch the situation out of propor- 
tion to the part their characters play : and Venice and 
Verona. Egypt and England, and Denmark. Scotland 
and France are but chambers opened by theatrical 
slides for Shakespeare to display Hamlet and Macbeth, 
Othello and Desdemona, Antony and Cleopatra. Shy- 
lock and Falstaff. Richard and John. The finest to- 
pographical pictures, of Andes and icebergs. Xiagara 
or Mount Hood, though the artist travel for them with 
his easel thousands of miles, hold us not like the 
way side drawing which has for its motive some human 
passion, posture or enterprise. An inspired fiddler, in 
crayon, treading on air with bow in hand, shall move 
me more than snowy plains or smoky mountains, the 
pomp of clouds or prairies in bloom. 

Self-assertion, in excess, is a vice ; but for what do 
I renounce the individual save for the nobler personal 
self, devoid of which I have no virtue ? If. in sorrow 
or sickness we sink too out of that, then no love can 
keep its hold. In such infirmity or insanity the mercy 
is death. Beware of being a baby or burden to lie 
down on your friends ! So your mortal charm will 
vanish, and your translation be desired ! In extra- 
ordinary genius or devotion there is nothing personal ? 
There is nothing but personal ! How much of God or 
Humanity can a man assimilate and not break bounds ? 
Health and personal power both increase to that point 
which such poets as Dante and Shakespeare approached. 



252 THE RISING FAITH. 

Caesar said to the young inan that opposed him, I could 
kill you easier than speak. If all the intellectual force 
in the Divina Commedia, or that supreme English 
Drama could become executive, what a thunderbolt or 
waterspout it would be ! It is said God is more than 
person, and must not be judged by any human anal- 
ogy. But how and by what ladder can we get above 
our own thought ? TThat empty talk to affirm non- 
personality as a positive trait, or attempt in our classi- 
fication any genus above our own ! The grandeur of 
Christ's indifferent assuming of the titles Son of God 
and Son of Man, was its implication that there was no 
diversity. What is infinite is the mind, be it as it 
may, tide or creek or fathomless sea ; and we might as 
well make a boundary between bay or inlet and the 
Atlantic, as between the intellect of a man or instinct 
of a beast and that universal intelligence, which knows 
how much each lower form can bear of itself without 
crumbling its clay. Man is finite ? But, if infinity be 
not in him it is out of his reach ; and those apprehen- 
sions, which are the hands of his soul, grope in the 
hollow tomb. Xo fancy so groundless as that any 
instruction respecting deity can be imparted beyond 
our own idea by the word impersonal, as if we added a 
cubit to the Almighty stature, by cutting off our own 
head ! He is human if we are divine ; and a man 
could lift himself out of his own clothes sooner than 
conceive an object of worship apart from the worship- 
per's mind. wt High as my heart" is Shakespeare's 
pretty phrase for love. If I would not detract from 
my Maker's dimensions, I must not contract my own. 
Only by my room to accommodate his glory can I 



PERSONALITY. 253 

honor him. What hospitality if the chamber cannot 
be entered by the royal guest ? To say he is no per- 
son is not to entertain, but, under cover of courtes}-, 
insult and turn him away. There is no place for pride 
in what is wanted for self-respect ! Self-disparagement 
is contempt for our author, as dispraise of his work is 
the artist's disgrace. God is person if we are. If he 
be not, then, in what is essential to and best in us, he 
had no hand. 

The merit of any human being is in his own gift. 
If you would be benefactor, give y our peculiarity the 
flavor that cannot be compounded with any other fruit. 
It is thought a mark of inferiority when the author ap- 
pears in his writing, as Byron, Wordsworth, Milton, 
draw full-length portraits of themselves on every page. 
Homer is so absent from his lines that the works under 
his title have been ascribed to various hands. There 
is no Shakespeare but the name ; only the lovers and 
servants, soldiers and clowns, kings and queens that 
drop from a pen with more magic than Prospero's wand. 
But this is shallow criticism. A discern er of spirits 
will find him in ever} T verse, tell by internal evidence 
the spurious pla}' or passage, and know when you quote 
from him though he remember not the phrase or place ; 
for the style is the man and the man in his style. Only 
the detective is wanting. Every artist's proverbial 
sensitiveness is proof how he lives in what he creates, 
and may be found in that lodging. It is an irritable 
race, jealous not only in the same class but different 
orders, the stage and studio, pulpit and press, all arts 
of expression how envious of each other ! Would they 
might know how they meet and are sent by the great 



254 THE RISING FAITH. 

artist to express the same thing ! A painter said : I 
get nothing out of those fellows the philosophers and 
care only for the company of painters. But votaries 
of pencil or pen, actors or ministers ma} r herd too much 
together and so miss the broad culture and central view 
which are conditions of excellence in any special call- 
ing. All vocations are but divers jets of one fountain, 
of which every performer is a mouthpiece, as the apos- 
tles spoke in many languages when on each of them 
lighted in flames of fire the Holy Ghost. Rubinstein 
informs the young woman asking his advice : You 
must not play on the keys, — that is gambling on the 
piano. He meant that the instrument was but a me- 
dium for that same sentiment which is the soul of music 
and eloquence and poetry and dramatic impersonation ; 
and this musician's conversation, as his execution, was 
demonstration of the truth. Nothing finer than mu- 
tual admiration among all interpreters of the supreme 
beaut}', nothing worse or more base than mutual con- 
tempt. I require the same respect for my cloth you 
ask for your canvas ; and do not understand, while I 
honor the gallery why you should despise the church, be- 
lieving that sermon and prayer, like statue and picture, 
have place in 1 the world. Friendship in all the profes- 
sions will improve and perfect each one. That might- 
iest of them in the popular mind, which we call 
journalism, has much to learn from the rest, and amid 
the clatter of revolving cylinders should listen while it 
prints, and submit to the correction it so copiously ap- 
plies. Old sceptics and rulers pass ; the editor is the 
only emperor left. The king can do no wrong ! He 
has this more than roj'al prerogative, that the press 



PERSONALITY. 255 

can be assailed or resisted only by or through itself; 
and this strength becomes more dangerous than a 
tyrant's when on the point in question all the news- 
papers drop for the moment partisan disputes and form 
in solid column to expel the fault-finder intruding into 
their eminent domain, or conspire to promote some 
sham or protect a social crime. T3^pes, like gunpowder, 
put the strong and weak on a level ; and anonymous 
contributors shoot behind the publisher like highway- 
men from a hedge. Xo so despicable immorality ad- 
mitted in this age as the allowance of public charges 
shielded from private accountability. Duelling is re- 
spectable in comparison with using as a stiletto the 
composer's stick ; and the backbiting tale-bearer is in 
the neighborhood a smaller curse than the slanderer 
and scandal-monger who can use a printing-office for 
his whispering-gallery and a continent the sounding- 
board of his lie. A Daily without conscience is a worse 
calamity than the corporation that has no soul. Any 
fool or poltroon opens under cover of the impersonal 
sheet his masqued battery on the man he would not 
presume to meet in a parlor or dare to encounter to his 
face, for fear of instant refutation and overwhelming 
shame. What clouds of suspicion and surmise, now 
so industriously raised, would be dispersed, and their 
whole generation shut orT by as personal a liability to 
answer for every word of the pen as syllable of the lips, 
and some decency and courtesy put for the wantonness 
and insolence that prevail. But would there not be less 
independence unless we could lay siege to the fortress 
of iniquity, as ancient warriors came up to the walled 
town under an immense shell ? Independence is born 



256 THE RISING FAITH. 

of candor and truth ! Only cowardice burrows and flies 
from shelter, as an Indian flings his tomahawk from be- 
hind a tree. Abraham Lincoln was once involved in a 
foolish duel for assuming with mistaken heroism the 
authorship of. an article not his own. What is manly 
or womanl}' but standing to one's word, like God, as a 
bond or vow ? Put the name to every sentence like the 
signature of your note ! 

It is a just equation to have like respect for person- 
ality in another as in ourselves. Your comment on my 
conduct is : I would not have done so. Well, you did 
not ! Are'you and I one ? Will you confound me with 
or absorb me into yourself? Your personality ceases 
so ; your channel of the Divine meaning is shut, and 
3'our egotism begins. In the clash of your atom with 
mine, both are bruised, and can no longer combine. 
" I would have put in a darker background had I 
painted that picture." But }'ou did not paint it ! Were 
I }'ou, I should make }x>ur foolish remark. The self, I 
prize, is not contained in my bosom ; I see it likewise 
in all. Love of neighbor and love of self are not 
diverse affections. It is my own soul that I wrong ; 
my own flesh that I pierce in my brother ; irry heart is 
betrayed when my sister is misled, and it bleeds with 
the wounded brute, as it did in Jacques while the "fat 
and greasy citizens " of the herd swept on and left the 
stricken deer behind. 

To the personal type in each one do justice as to the 
seed of a flower or a gem imbedded, and gleaming at a 
point from the rock. What is perfection but to eluci- 
date it in my breast? Its glory all the host of heaven, 
with crown?, and palms, and harps in the shining man- 



PERSONALITY. 257 

sions, can but unfold. What marks in the faces of 
youth we see of as yet unconscious and undeveloped 
power ! In that maiden, slry as a fawn or just fledged 
bird, is an electricity, latent to herself, which will thun- 
der and lighten by and by. With exquisite instinct 
for truth, Jesus puts the prodigal's grace in -his coming 
to himself ; and Shakespeare sa3's, if true to self, we are 
false to none. Character is but nature brought out. 
O Calvin, if you called the stars a disgrace to him who 
went round to light up their burners, }~our blasphemy 
were less. Said one to a young girl, You will do noth- 
ing base : but take not the credit ! Nobleness obliges, 
Novalis calls character the educated will. It makes 
the multitude of propensities, so apt to become a mob 
rather like the members of an orchestra. But when 
the instruments have been tuned, the grating ceased, 
the pegs screwed up and down ; the strings crack and 
bows rattle no more ; the squeaking and tumbling of 
stools and stands and rustling of books are over : we 
expect music. No pipe or chord is wanting within, 
though some persons have more trouble than others to 
get them into play ; yet, as Dr. Spurzheim chose a wife 
good by nature instead of grace, by the least artifice 
or affectation the harmon}^ is marred. What is dear to 
me is not your will-work and will- worship, what puts 
you out of breath, but what with easy beauty you are 
and cannot help being. Imitate holy men, says the 
preacher. No, I answer ; copy nobody ! Moral mim- 
icry is failure. I asked my expert friend, has any one 
composed better than Schubert? Not for our time, 
was the reply. He knew Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Han- 
del, Haydn, yet kept his own footing, and was himself. 
17 



258 THE RISING FAITH. 

Keep good compare, know the fine persons, read inter- 
esting biographies, analyze the poem and romance ; 
but hark to the secret whisper above all the voices 
with which the horizon of history rings. 

But if a man is a beast, a fox, snake, bear ; that 
shall he be? These fierce creatures accomplish their 
purpose without remorse. But the human serpent, 
tiger or 'wolf, is ashamed when caught in his tricks. 
The Legislators in the Capitol turn red and pale when 
their votes cast for undue dividends are exposed. What 
a terror in Congress was the Pacific Railway builder's 
memorandum-book ! A visitor to a famous chief of 
metropolitan corruption found a diamond rolling on the 
public floor, which had dropped from his luxurious 
dress. In such careless pomp he indulged while unac- 
cused ; but he trembled under charges of guilt. Beneath 
what but his better self did he wince ? We say of a 
drunkard, he is not himself; nor is any man when 
transported with passion. Not in the saint, but sinner, 
is the self suppressed. It is a want of fineness in 
Prayer-book or Bible, to say Christ was crucified. He 
was never slain ! He rose before he expired, and 
needed no fancied ascension. Where he was and 
wherever he is, is the point to ascend to. As one fish 
or bird drives another out of its shell or nest, and 
takes felonious occupation, so a false changeling self 
commits every trespass or crime. A man, eating his 
savory dish, turned to the lady whom he had not 
helped, and cried, I forgot myself. No, she answered, 
you did not ! The wit was against him, but truth on 
his side. The soul without s}^mpathy is a lost child, 
and the rapture of love is self-possession. Not yoxiv 



PERSONALITY. 259 

praise of me but entrance into my thought is my de- 
light. Eufus Choate feared at the opera he might 
dilate with the wrong emotion ; a President of Harvard 
declined visiting a picture-gallery, he should have to 
make believe so much; a Boston physician thinks girls 
should be taught in a girl's way, boys in a boy's way ; 
Mr. Agassiz, every boy or girl in his or her own way. 
With such personal truth, each would find the true 
place, and tired of living no longer be the epitaph on 
so many a suicide's tomb. One man's sincere nature 
is to act a part on the stage. Only so personating, 
was Garrick quite himself; and once being missed by 
a ga}~ company was found throwing a negro boy in a 
back-yard into convulsions of laughter as he imitated 
to the life the strut and crow and swelling feather} r 
rage of a turkey-cock. Who are these scientists that 
insist we have no right to a persuasion which we cannot 
deduce from what they observe ? If I have a sentiment 
which old scriptures, mystic sentences and noble char- 
acters feed, I shall not before any of their investiga- 
tions ground arms, but carry them my own way. I 
shall tell Tyndall of " the light that never was on land 
or sea," and Humboldt, when he talks of being an 
insect crawling on the earth, that he reminds me of the 
grovelling verse in the hymn : 

" What worthless worms are we ! " 

The superstition of the student matches that of the 
priest. Understanding will never rule out intuition, 
nor self-sacrifice defer to calculation. " What is the 
noblest passion in human nature ? " Sacrifice for an 
idea, I wrote. Sacrifice for another, suggested my 



260 THE RISING FAITH. 

friend. Both are sacrifice for the same image in us 
which no science can comprehend, and no sin can erase 
with its foul die stamped in the story of eveiy tribe. What 
is the sin but a gloomy mask of grandeur? What makes 
it but an inward decree ? Sin is but the sense of sin ! 
Does not the mournful knell, the funeral toll, the 
tocsin-stroke, the fire-alarm come from the same height 
in the tower as the news of victory, the jubilee of inde- 
pendence or the wedding-peal? So the same bells in 
us chime sweetly or are "jangled out of tune." On 
the blackboard of an evil conscience is the demonstra- 
tion of the moral facult}\ It takes a man to be a 
sinner ! Hawk, kingfisher, goat, leopard, has no com- 
punction. Newton's dog Diamond could not be sorry 
for upsetting the lamp among the papers ,• for. as the 
astronomer cried out, he little knew the mischief he 
had done. The tiger and cobra destroy annually hun- 
dreds of human lives in India without remorse. But 
man repents, and believes, and adores. In every noble 
art or feeling is part of the personality of God. " Put 
me where the north wind ma}' blow over my bones 
through the pines," said one I honored when he had 
" accomplished as an hireling his task," and " the 
evening drew nigh, and the shadows of five-and-seventy 
years were dark." But no encomiums, thick as ever 
studded Roman arch or Egyptian obelisk, could cele- 
brate his purity beyond all the breezes that ever blew. 
Divine Personality I preach. I cannot enter into 
the merriment of Mr. Arnold, writing as if not to his 
peers, at the idea of a First Cause, or even into his 
ridicule of the Trinity, though it be a dogma I do not 
hold ; for it must have served some end of religious 



PERSONALITY." 261 

conception and worship, by laws of thought, having 
sank so deep and lasted so long, though triplicity 
divide into multiplicity, and all number in deity become 
innumerable as the wrinkles in what JEschylus calls 
the incalculable laughter of the sea. Am I part of the 
picture to my friend ? Doubtless while he sits a pas- 
sive contemplator, and looks. All seems picture, on a 
calm summer-afternoon, as I lie on the ground and 
gaze from the headland. The ships that had fled to 
harbor from the north-east storm, like flocks of doves 
to the windows, now a long line of rejoicing ghosts 
troop to sea, which heaves in vast glassy swells to my 
feet, and flings the snow-white foam of every bursting 
billow high over my head. What is all but beauty 
for me, and what am I less than the centre of these 
mighty circles of the bending ocean, curved horizon 
and the arching sky ? If it be picture alone I am too 
small a creature on the canvas to be seen ! But, if I 
start from my posture, straightway the panorama 
becomes an act. Nothing is hung up in a frame to 
admire. All co-acts with me. It is a race of being, 
and the universe a race-course. It is a competition of 
oarsmen, and we see the judges' boat. " Think } r e 
God made the heavens and earth for sport ? " No, nor 
yet for any poet's fancy or philosophic surveyor's rod 
and chain ; but for love and duty ; for service and its 
ecstacy of joy. Rest has its time, and inspection its 
charm. What a temptation to idleness is your sit- 
uation among the hills or on the shore? But what 
preparation is ease for work ! The vacuum is a power 
in mechanics, without which no piston would move, or 
car or vessel go ; and the vacation is that vacuum for 



262 THE RISING FAITH. 

the mind. That nature abhors it, was a foolish prov- 
erb. She loves it, and God is in it as much as in the 
schoolman's fulness. In no exhausted receiver does 
his sufficiency suffer loss. But only as a base of power 
can we vindicate the void. Who and what is it that 
tells me I am a portion of the painting, to come with 
the dot of my little figure into the field of view? 
Explain to me this seer whose e3'e is but the lens or 
pane of glass through which the prospect is at his 
command ! Is the observer less than the thing ob- 
served? What is the vision but his; and without 
some visual orb, above or below, what substance to be 
seen ? I protest there could be no light without the 
sight it is made b} T , and one with. If we go behind 
the organ to the act we must reverse Darwin's process, 
and not derive it from the object, but the object from 
it. The picture I am part of to you, — by whom 
designed and drawn? An artist is implied in the 
sketch, or the metaphor is false. Are we not pupils in 
that artist's school, who uses not one great pencil in 
his solitary hand, but portrays through us the curious 
scene ? How much we create it we cannot tell ; nor 
whether without us, in the one great family of mind, it 
would be at all. 

"Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses 
Or else worth all the rest ; " 

cries Macbeth, spell-bound by the spectral blood}' blade. 
How stupidly we allow the color or concave of the sky to 
dominate the living and comprehending mind, and with 
thoughtless chronology put our date after the planet's 
orbit and bulk ! If I must have outward ancestry a 



PERSONALITY. 263 

worm is as good as a world. If I be born and die by 
the Almanac, I care not if the dial be ephemeron or 
sun. Individual or Person, I am fraction of the inte- 
gral humanity. Two things are wonderful in the units 
of this mighty sum of rational life deriving from one 
source ; that, living so long, they understand each 
other or themselves so little, and get on together so 
well. What waking and sleeping mysteries we remain ; 
and how by disagreement and diversity we correspond 
and fit ! It is sometimes said of two intimates, how 
unlike they are. Fortunately for them ! If each 
repeated the other's talent, were actuated by the other's 
motive, shared the other's humor, swelled his passion 
and desired the same thing, how intolerable their union, 
chafing at every point and wearing them out. O my 
wife, friend, child, you must not be me over again ! 
Who could bear alwaj^s his own company? Who 
would not be disgusted with his exact copy? The 
good Lord in mercy duplicates nothing in his work- 
manship ! We want no fac-simile of aught however 
great or good. One Moses or Jesus or Paul is enough ! 
We are mutually endurable because we vary in our 
virtue as well as our vice ; and, like children in their 
sport of the swing-board, on the fence, are pleased to 
go alternately up and down ; only the plank must not 
slip. By inequality we are balanced, and keep perfect 
time of happiness, as by the compensation-pendulum 
our watch loses not a second in a month. Harmony is 
not secured by genius or excellence in the mates. The 
worst alienations may come between the noblest. 
Paul and Barnabas have so sharp a contention in the 
choice of an assistant, they break asunder on their 



264 THE RISING FAITH. 

missionary tour ; and, but for the conjugal checks and 
balances of contrasted qualities, all helpmeets would 
be hinderers, and households go to ruin. Wonderful 
steerage of Providence in us, with hand every instant 
on the wheel to make wreck so rare ! Moan or gloat 
as you will over the failures of domestic peace, the 
social jars and civil wars ; let me magnify the miracle 
of general concord, and refuse to sacrifice law, govern- 
ment or marriage to your revolutionary whim, which is 
the disorder it pretends ! But no private power will 
save us without the counterpart grace. 

By our overcharge of selfishness we put nature to 
shame. A great preacher names as the distinction 
between the divine and human that the latter is but 
selfishness and the former love. But God is as dear to 
himself as is any man ! To be virtuous must we hate 
our own flesh ? Infinite benevolence is pure self-love ; 
and the preciousness to me of my own being is the 
only basis of my equal regard for the lowliest and 
least. Jesus could not have died for Jewish self-wor- 
shippers and despised Gentile dogs, but for the match- 
less emphasis he said I with, in every sentence, and 
declared he was loved and had glory with the Father 
before the foundation of the world. This self is no 
vain or carnal thing to be fed with luxury and pam- 
pered with compliment and praise. It is no impure 
or greedy self, but a miraculous existence, I am yet 
unused to and more amazed at than an infant sur- 
veying the continent of its bod\ T and feeling after its 
insulated limbs. This honor and delight in our consti- 
tution it is blasphemy to forbid. " Drive out nature 
with a fork, she will recur," in the most orthodox pro- 



PERSONALITY. 265 

fessor of humiliation. Is the bird selfish preening its 
feathers and cleaning its beak on the bough? You 
shall not give a bad name to dainty scrupulosity, 
against soiling, in one of your own kind. Self-love 
and neighbor-love live or die together ! Expel one, 
you expel both. Identify them in one affection, and 
you are blessed with your maker. Let unventilated 
cells of monks, diverse from dens of wickedness only 
in name, warn of the dangers of violence to ourself ! 
Xo more certain is the tidal wave, such as whelmed St. 
Thomas and shook Santa Cruz, in turn to deluge the 
land and lay bare the bottom of the sea, than the 
forcing any deep original affection from its seat to 
devastate the soul. The poise of self with itself in 
another is that water of the river of God that seeks 
a level more even than justice holding her scales. How 
the beam inclines ! 

"If self the wavering balance shake, 
It's rarely right adjusted." 

But 'tis a false and not true self. The Tower of Pisa 
was not built to lean, but left as a toy for travellers, a 
curiosity not to be multiplied, and by my engineering 
friend resented as a nuisance and offence. But what 
leaning towers are many men ! Let not the salary-grab 
be so notorious, in our astonishment and blame, as to 
hide hundreds worse beside which the censors may be 
guilty of themselves. My lady's well-nourished canary 
scatters the seed round its cage, and lets the wild birds 
of the wood come and take these crumbs from the rich 
man's table. If we cannot " shake our superflux" to 
the needy and " show the heavens more just," we must 



266 THE RISING FAITH, 

reverse Christ's saying, and confess how much better 
are the fowls than we ! We are trusted each with this 
organism of sense and soul on a credit-system running 
to whatever clay of judgment. Let us put our talent 
to usury, keep our jewel of innocency without loss or 
stain, and grow the hundredfold harvest of goodness in 
our field. When this marvellous essence in us is held 
in like esteem in every other's claim, then the Creator 
pronounces his work good once more, and the Father 
is well pleased with his beloved son. 

Admirable in us is the e} r e ; still more the hand that 
reproduces on a surface, in form and color, the view. 
But there is that which cannot be painted or seen. We 
may get a likeness ; but no portrait of a person was 
ever taken. Am I but a picture to the fine essayist? 
Is his pronunciation pictorial ? Is he a picture to him- 
self? The Israelites were forbid to make any engrav- 
ing of God. The image we were made in cannot be 
presented. It is idolatry and impiety to put into any 
frame the humblest child. Artists grind their friends 
into paint ; but there is a beauty that resents being 
looked at, is dishonored b}' analysis, can be thrown into 
no crucible, an irreducible residuum above your con- 
ceit of characterization which is such disrespect. That 
somewhat unmeasured in your gossip of words or by 
any tint of }'our brush is for you to love, revere, and 
cooperate with, and never use for your purpose, or think 
to describe. It never sits to you ! We fancy too much 
success in our critical discriminations of eulogy or 
blame. The personal qualities were never put into 
oration or epitaph. Nero has been misrepresented as 
fiddling while Rome burned ; he was but re-creating the 



PERSONALITY. 267 

town ! Dr. Charming was a proverb for the veneration 
in which he held the human soul ; yet his visitors some- 
times felt he was considering what he could get out of 
them for his theme. But the mind refuses to be a topic 
of literature or subject of art. You shall not stare at 
one's face, or peer into the motions of the heart. 

Individualism is the present craze. Individuality 
is but the termination of a human being. Health 
and righteousness depend on the background of his 
humanity, as that on the deeper basis of divinity. The 
mere individual is a branch cut off from the tree of 
life to be cast out and wither. Only when he becomes 
personal is he a man and member of mankind. Beasts 
and birds, fishes and plants, are individual ; but we do 
not speak of them as persons. A person is represent- 
ative of something in character more profound than 
an}' individuality ; as the word is taken from the mask 
of the actor who played the part of one behind and 
more than himself. We are to enact truth, beauty, 
deity each in his several way. But we enact hell on 
earth when it is only our particular appetites and 
propensities we put on the scene ; yet this diabol- 
ism, of doing every one as he lists, claims to be a 
philosophy in our day. It panders to iniquity and 
passes itself on credulity under the sacred title of , 
liberty. But individual liberty and personal freedom 
are not the same. To use* liberty as license to do what 
we please, while society, as an organization, has no 
right to interfere, and it is no other man's or woman's 
business to look after us, will soon bring all the circles 
of Dante's Inferno above ground. It is the sad trait 
of our civilization that such self-deception of a shallow 



268 THE RISING FAITH. 

sincerity so widely prevails. How it is taken for the 
shield of treachery, weapon of seduction, and cover of 
lust ! Sophistry in theory becomes impurity in deed ; 
and it is the danger of a false radicalism in religion 
and society to disintegrate the community. It is 
reported as a notable and happy circumstance that a 
recent dedication of a building was made not to God 
but to man ! But if atheism be a religion, it is as 
superficial as it is frank. Who and where is the man 
to receive the offering and the hallowed shrine ? Is it 
the race in general ? It cares nothing for the special 
ceremony or design ! Is it the number present in the 
audience of spectators to consecrate? The Russian 
author, Tourganieff, describes a character who spoils 
with his busy head the simplicity of his heart ; and 
Coriolanus, entreated by his kindred to spare Rome, 
says : 

"111 never 
Be such a gosling to obey instinct ; but stand 
As if a man were author of himself 
And knew no other kin." 

But self-deifying will never satisfy the human soul. 
What is man but for One mindful of him ? God is a 
spirit ; and truly man is such ! Whoever saw man 
more than he saw God? But man is a spirit only as 
he owns an author, whose power is not limited to these 
earthly tribes or fleeting generations of time. God 
exists in our idea. Yet our idea reaches beyond the 
nations. When it becomes aspiration, and we sing : 

" All ye bright armies of the skies," 



PERSONALITY. 269 

we conceive of nobler forms than ever trooped across 
the planet in our ancestry, or we in our posterity can 
hope. We are all delegates from the world of spirits. 
Of sovereignty let us not talk ! There have been men 
and women sitting on thrones ; but every person is a 
servant, and none ever was king. The personality of 
God is not monarchy, but chief service of all. Crom- 
well and Luther feel only that they are instruments, 
leaders onty as they are led. The great president 
said he waited on Providence, and would not force 
events. But how many jackdaws of philanthropy, 
not abiding Heaven's patience or the alliance of 
time, insist that now or never the good work must 
be complete ! Thus individual vanity presumes to 
usurp the province of the Supreme. Through what 
periods and processes the wonderful force, which is 
wisdom and goodness, rounds the orb, matures the 
gem and ripens the mind ! Waiting is not to sleep, 
but watch the wind and " tide in the affairs of men." 
But the scout and sentinel have their glory as well as 
the besiegers marching to the assault. Masterly 
inactivity is noiseless action. I am but for my con- 
stituency and cause ; to show my reason to be, in my 
errand all my life, running with some message post 
haste ; and the Greek, that died of exhaustion after 
delivering the news of victory, is the type. Every 
man expires with his despatch. Genius is said to be 
rare. But one man in a million deserves the name. 
It should be universal. It is as common as this repre- 
sentation in every one of the purpose for which he 
exists. One may be a herald, like a trumpeter or 
drummer in the army, or a plenipotentiary, like Homer 



270 THE RISING FAITH. 

with harp, or Csesar in the field ; but in the knowledge 
of duty and conscious service is the single stamp of 
honor admitting to the grand peerage ; and what is 
the judgment but our final report ! On duty? It is 
what we are never off! It was said of one, He is 
nothing out of his own town ; we are nought but in 
our object. When Jesus came to stir the public mind, 
his countrymen could but think of Elias, or one of the 
old prophets returned. » It was the same old business 
he was identified with. What he taught he was ; and 
the superstitious conscience of Herod thought the 
beheaded John had risen for such mighty works. We 
are but waves or tidings. It was said of an unsocial 
student, He stands for the desert ! Better for that 
than as a miser, pretender or supercilious jester for 
one's self. The Roman candidate, like modern ones, 
went round for the people's voices and votes. Let us 
heed those which no mortal lips or hands speak or cast ! 
But be not slaves of whoever, in or out of the flesh, 
undertakes to control and rule. Spirits do 3-011 obey? 
What spirits? Spirits, like human creatures, maj T be 
intruders, tyrants or bores. Keep your distance ! Try 
the spirits, and take not their word. They ma} r be 
tricks}' or malignant, as well as honest and benign. 
The celestial coursers must be subject to us while they 
draw ! I will stand on the ocean's marge and see what 
arrives, the flotsam and jetsam from afar. But I will 
not gather all in my hands, only the treasures, leaving 
the refuse on that samty shore of the mincl, wider than 
any barren beach. To get and give information of 
the heavens is the endless task. We are not here to 
be entertainers or entertained, but for a serious de- 



PERSONALITY. 271 

sign. Shakespeare, who never misses the mark, starts 
our tears with his most pathetic speech over the jester's 
fate : " Alas, poor Yorick ! " But earnestness is that 
consciousness of an author, which is the only authority. 
Is it the triumph of science to get rid of God ? But 
b}' advanced stages of character and culture the feel- 
ing of Infinity is increased. When two material ele- 
ments combine, the result is not a compound but a 
simple substance. So in that blending of the human 
with the divine, by which we w r ill what is willed in us 
and work what is wrought, and mean what is meant, 
and are as God is. 

All persons harmonize, who utter with divers ex- 
pression the same thing. Small critics pounce with 
charges of plagiarism upon resemblances of thought 
and phrase. Carlyle is overwhelmed with the influence 
of Goethe ; Emerson of Carlyle ; Parker and Thoreau 
of Emerson ; and they in turn have their smaller or 
larger schools. But as truth is one and the universe 
built by law, the seers and sayers of its beauty must 
be alike ! The Latin poverb might pass, Perish they 
who have said oar thoughts before us, were there prop- 
erty for any man in the landscape or the spiritual realm. 
If similarity of figure or story prove intellectual plun- 
der, the most original writers would not escape ; Chau- 
cer was a robber, Shakespeare the greatest of thieves, 
and Goethe stole on principle and declared he had con- 
veyed everything he could find into his works as a 
bundle on which he had but written his name. All the 
poets, painters, philosophers, historians, essayists bor- 
row and lend. I stand on my green tongue of land, 
edged seaward with the ragged cliffs and sloping to 



272 THE RISING FAITH. 

the west, with smooth grass mingling with soft sand, 
to kiss the quiet bay. The sun sinks on one hand, 
and the moon rises on the other, as though Libra held 
and weighed the two balls together in her scales. The 
tossing waves on my left sparkle with the pale beams 
that grow brighter and less spectral as the evening- 
shadows thicken and advance, and become yellow 
almost as the orb from which by double reflection they 
are sent. On the right the unrippling waters, guarded 
by long reefs from the ocean-swell, and from the stroke 
of the East wind, spread their molten glass under the 
gray sky, curtained with black and crimson clouds. 
Beaut}^ sees its face in that mirror and is not ashamed. 
What measureless liquid depths, what broad stretches 
and fine tinges are returned from the rival arch beneath ! 
The copy is as good as the picture ; both done b}^ one 
master-hand. But what an advantage with the writer 
that should first put such a scene into words ! Every 
one coming after seems to repeat him, when each 
successor might have as keen a zest and as sure a 
stroke. Did Spenser monopolize the tale ; or Job own 
the situation ; or Tacitus forbid any other narration of 
the facts ? Authors are not contestants, but a choir, 
whose score is set down for them by One not pleased 
with their quarrel, and abiding no question of his right. 
As well find fault with a flock of birds in the sky, or 
say the one only knows his direction who makes the 
foremost corner of their filing wedge, as accuse him, 
who in' the troop of writers comes behind, of not using 
his own wings or singing. with his own voice. Take 
with thanks eveiy sincere contribution, and forbear 
your carping complaint ! This minstrelsy of letters 



PERSONALITY. 273 

comes in bands, as every splendid age of Pericles, Au- 
gustus or Elizabeth shows. Deeper than art, at the 
springs of nature, the kinship lies. The heavenly in- 
habitants are always figured as in companies that stand 
or soar in accordant action or praise. The Lord is 
gathering and training his performers for perfect per- 
sonation. 

Originality there is none save in the One and All. 
Listening mortals only overhear the music ; and the 
bard hums what he catches. No wonder he chants 
like his brothers when it is the same song ! He is but 
an earthly aeolian attachment to the heavenly harp ; 
and, as there is but one harmony, so there is but one 
truth. I have as good a right as anybody to my own 
opinion ? Not unless I have hearkened to this upper 
Wisdom ; not unless with a single eye I look at 
the facts and comprehend them in their reason and 
right ! Else my opinion is my crime and everybody's 
bane. The democracy, that judges by number and not 
by light, is the ruin of the State. Universal and indi- 
vidual liberty is anarchy, without the check of law ; 
and if political theocracy be tyranny, personal theoc- 
racy, the divine government in the soul, is alone the 
source of freedom ; and can cause the civil or church 
establishment to be a success. What men are, they 
communicate ; and the}~ are nought but in conforming 
to eternal command. We want your knowledge, not 
3"our will or your whim. You think nothing has passed 
because nothing has been said ; that the minister's 
visit failed because he argued no point in morals or 
theology, as a perfunctoiy pastor said he never left a 
house without saying a word for his master ; and the 
18 



274 THE RISING FAITH. 

orthodox loyalist thinks he must stand up for Jesus. 
But the Quaker silence may be more eloquent than 
speech. Your look, }^our manner, } T our atmosphere, 
the tone of your voice, the turn of your head, every 
voluntary motion or unconscious gesture, though you 
took no side in an}' question, told your mind. Your 
presence is poison or a better climate than any tropic 
isle. I have not, said one, a friend in the world. 
Some secession from divinity, some sin against the 
Holy Ghost is in such account ! Only they are forsaken 
of man who are forsaken of God. 

Every great Person has his following, is a magnet 
stuck round with steel filings, a comet with a lumin- 
ous trail. The Highlander spoke of Fergus Maclvor 
" with his tail on," meaning his retinue in arms ; and 
persons are the glory of the world. Splendid things 
we remember in the scenery of this theatre of land and 
sea. But what are the stage properties to the actors, 
the fine people we have known and travel after, more 
than to behold pyramids or hills ? Though small in 
figure they include the landscape that seems to contain 
them ! Vanished, they surround us still. In the mid- 
night watches their faces shine. They cluster to keep 
my pillow from being lonely ; and I entertain the 
vision with shut eyes for a " bliss of solitude." King, 
with his Italian climate in the New England frost ; 
Peabod}', with his settled good-will, like a law of 
nature ; Channing, dissolving the visitor into his theme 
with his musing air ; Taylor, flaming to every man at 
a touch ; Allston, pale as if just risen from the dead, 
and bright as an angel detailed like Uriel for some 
task ; Lowell, who filled parlor or temple with his love- 



PERSONALITY. 275 

beaming eyes, and put his genius into a look and tone ; 
Greenwood and Ware, that might have been " of the 
Twelve " ; Greenough, cast in a finer mould than any 
of his noble works ; Webster, who was in his prime 
the State, and Loring, the best of whose unspotted 
days were his last ; Dabney, consul and conscript 
father, beloved ruler and patron of health in the island 
of Fa} T al ; dear and gracious women with no printed 
record because a better Book first got their names ; 
they all gather around too clear to the inner view to 
need other manifestation, and with a claim whose title 
becomes obsolete with no lapse of time. Do I recall 
and cherish what the Power, that begot and bore, has 
dropped and forgot? Is there but ostrich-oblivion in 
the heavens of that nobilit}^ of conscious being which 
alone can justify the building and furniture of the 
earth? Does God amuse himself with these fireworks 
of the soul, and then let them sink like the blazing 
rockets and sparkling wheels in the festival of a summer 
night? Nothing so much as personality deserves to 
abide ; and were true persons more common, there could 
be of their continuance no doubt. It is no bodily res- 
urrection of Jesus, real or supposed, which is notable ; 
but his disciples' inability to imagine him dead ! Every 
grand personage secures its own perpetuity. Only 
when we depend for our importance on our forward- 
ness, creeps in uncertainty of our fate. What you are 
is more than what you say. Withhold not your testi- 
mony ; but mistake not for it your ambition, imper- 
tinence, spite and conceit. Pugnacity is the most 
contagious disease, and sure sign of an inferior mind. 
Let us have a new Beatitude : Blessed are they who 



276 THE RISING FAITH. 

make no remarks ! God's witnesses are not censors 
or scolds, and they only stand for him whose silence 
means more than their speech. 

But put no individual fondness for the divine love of 
all ! What is my handful of friends, or household of 
idols, to the human race? All are immortal or none, 
said Abraham Lincoln ; and I confess nry preference, 
not for great company, but common folks. Folks are 
better than angels, said Father Taylor. The people I 
meet in my walk refresh me more than the famous 
guests at joux fine club or exclusive dinner. I love 
mankind more than any of its members. The good- 
will of the neighborhood, said one, I covet more than 
the fame of Shakespeare. I gaze at this living pan- 
orama of humanity, as it unrolls, till statesmen and 
monarchs, bishops and authors, seem no more than 
foam thrown up a little further from the heaving sea. 
What we call revolutions affect the mighty deep of the 
human heart less than the storm does the ocean from 
whose bed it tears some bits of rockweed to float on 
the surface of the bay. The genius of the great mod- 
ern French painter, Millet, has chosen to represent 
what adorers of rank consider low life. On a bit of 
canvas he sketches a girl knitting coarse stockings ; a 
cane near-by stands for the granclsire ; and the second 
generation, betwixt her and him, is shown in certain 
ghostly iron mallets of laborers far off, with perfect 
action hammering stone. Why did I pass by the lus- 
tres of dress and fashion in other pictures, on the wall, 
to brood over this ? For the same reason that equip- 
ages and gay dresses in the street are as the idle wind, 



PERSONALITY. 277 

while every mower in the field, and babe at the window, 
and toddling ilax-head at the door, win regard. 

But why celebrate persons, when on laws alone we 
can rely? Are not all persons subject to change, and 
more fickle than fortune in their mind? What a his- 
tory of the world, in failing friendships, and love that 
grows cold, while the ordinances of nature never vary 
from their track ! But, though deceived a thousand 
times, we must confide ! Credit in business is a neces- 
sity, and can be destroyed by no whirlwinds of disaster 
or number of cheats. Nobody ever leaned, in his heart, 
on a law ! We have to talk of the bosom even of God, 
whom with Job, though he slaj^, we trust ; and, how- 
ever human fellowship betray, we believe in a possible 
truth to us of creatures like ourselves. We only post- 
pone the reality as we sing of " the land of the leal." 
But actual loyalty, prevailing over treachery, alone jus- 
tifies any annals of mankind ; and the circle is not only 
lowest, but narrowest, for the traitors in hell. The 
multitude of the faithful makes us not ashamed of our 
race. How many a picture of fidelity, rising to the sub- 
lime, is not alone the glory of earth, but our best proof 
and prediction of immortality ! Affection is no pretence 
or passing dream ; people are truer to each other than 
to themselves. Permanence of sentiment, to match any 
intellectual veracity, is the charm of romance ; and the 
poet well draws from womanhood its main illustration. 
Love is so the maiden's life that, if she cease to be 
beloved, she declares, in the play, she will not love 
herself! Such a drama goes not beyond the fact. 
Wherefore the beauty, she is born with, or the attire 
it is set off by, but to win the feeling she exists in? 



278 THE RISING FAITH. 

Without devotion in mortal fellowship, were no eter- 
nity of goodness, which we call God ! In a cold stat- 
ute, though everlasting, is no support for the soul. For 
sustenance there must be response ! To our pulse some- 
thing must beat back, throb answering throb, to give 
the sense either of satisfaction or repose. Nothing 
short of infinite sympathy the spirit in us asks ; and 
what is that but universal personality? Ail the cun- 
ning processes of matter cannot content the mind with- 
out the cheer of companionship, in kindly regard, and 
emulous honor for every great and good cause ; and, to 
the cynical question of Mr. Carlyle, what decree there 
ever was that we should be happy, against the irony 
of fate, we boldly reply, a command from the founda- 
tion of the world, before the morning stars sang to- 
gether, by Him that lit their lamps. 

In this delight of the spirit we have no merit. But 
one thing is worse than feeling holy, and that is to say : 
I am holier than thou I Not aloud, or with show, but 
silent and lowly is the good work* As the lightning- 
rod not only conducts thunderbolts to the ground, but, 
without noise, through its thousand angles and points, 
draws the electricit}^ from the air all the time, so a true 
soul discharges the clouds of wrath without harm, and 
by perpetual restoration of equilibrium protects the 
house. Jesus needed not to get up out of his grave- 
clothes to bring life and immortality to light : the noble 
temper always announces the blessed destmy. Do you 
never have a doubt? asked one, of her friend, as he 
prophesied a better lot. If I do, he answered, it comes 
from my senses, never from my soul. 



XII. 
PRAYEK. 

WHAT have we to say why sentence against it be 
not pronounced ? The wonder is that airy one, 
especially in public, presumes to pray ; and so faulty 
and unsatisfying is the performance, it is not strange 
to fall back on a recitation, and have reading of prayers 
in the church ; the real argument for a liturgy being 
the failure in his office of the priest. God has been 
rightly entreated of clcl ; but none are equal to the 
communion now, as the bow of Ulysses could not by 
his successors be bent ! So we repeat and rest in the 
devout sentence, and make the Cathedral arches ring 
with ancient periods, which, with strange solecism, we 
call Collects for the day ! But do we not live in a new 
da}', have our own requests and wants ? A petition for 
safe return from sea was the nearest that could be 
found, when one had been drowned in a canal, to meet 
the case. I knew a chaplain in a Legislature try his 
hand at extemporaneous utterance in vain, and after a 
little stammering, run into the familiar verbal rut. I honor 
David, and Job, and Agustine, and Athanasius ; but why 
should they take the words beforehand out of my mouth 
and make a memory of my fellowship with God ? Let 
(279) 



280 THE RISING FAITH. 

me treasure their beautiful piety, but not substitute it 
for my own, for there is no prox}^ or pairing off in the 
closet or at the judgment ; and that is but a nominal 
temple into which all the closets do not open, and every 
arch and rafter of which private sincerity does not turn 
and la}\ Caw, caw, came the sound of the crows into 
my open window one summer morning, as I was read- 
ing aloud the Hebrew Psalms, for a satire on the 
ecstacies that must be salted down with all their 
anachronisms, obsolete occasions, dead histories and 
dreadful curses instead of nry fresh aspiring and season- 
able praise. Is the religious sentiment an antiquity, 
and the fashion of its offering a curiosity like a bit of 
carved work from the shrine at Jerusalem, or a gem or 
statue in a ciypt of the shrine, or out of the river's bed 
in Galilee or Rome? It is not strange that science, 
with its strides into surprises without end, should in- 
sult the worship that is but a precedent, a reference to 
former custom, and a feeling settling on the lees. 
Shall we be content with the dregs of the once so de- 
licious draught and the crumbs of the table, or come 
guests to a feast newly spread and served, affirming our 
own right to a seat ? At least the philosophic pretence 
of ridicule on prayer let us brand as shallow and false. 
As well prove there is no place or use for breath as 
disown or refute a deeper inspiration ! It will not, 
the naturalist tells us, alter the laws. It need not, for 
it is one of them, we reply ; and that is the superstition 
and superficiality which puts the laws and the Power 
whose word they syllable, quite outside the human 
frame, and makes an idol of the world by parting it 
from the soul, when we ourselves are but sprays from 



PRAYER. 281 

the root of the universal self, and our consciousness 
but a shore for the clashing of the boundless surf. 
The waves are many, but the sea is one, without which 
the smallest billow or foam-bell could not exist ; and 
I am either an excrescence, or a particle of the Infinite 
life and portion of its incessant healthy growth ; for 
God is growth, and no absolute immutableness or 
full stop. He comes to consciousness in the human 
mind; all difference is in quantity, not quality ; and 1 
can do what I must, are maxims of the modern German 
wisdom which do not disparage Deity in exalting the 
divinity, the soul is born of and conceives. When a 
young man driven by impulse or withheld by sloth, 
says, I cannot, he knows he can ; for there is no limit 
in us to the moral power or bank we draw on, which, 
unlike that in a gambling-den, cannot be broken, and 
has a deposit in our favor we cannot exhaust. 

Prayer is the draft alwa} T s honored ; and let the 
reformers who would convict and banish it as an of- 
fender of law consider their task ; what they must 
exscind from the dictionary and daily speech, what 
lines they must leave out of poetr} r , and to what muti- 
lations subject history ; to what achievements of he- 
roism and triumphs of the martyrs that have sprung 
from its power we have no title ; of what tests, with no 
substitute of actual glory and present joy, we must 
straightway be dispossessed. Mr. Bowdler gave us an 
expurgated edition of Shakespeare dropping certain low 
words. But sceptical science must furnish an expur- 
gated edition of literature omitting its highest expres- 
sions, and of human nature without its noblest exercise. 
Physiologists have wondered what might in the ani- 



282 THE RISING FAITH. 

mal organism be the use of the spleen, which for temper 
is such a bad name. But the utility of devotion were 
a different point of debate. The fox who had lost his 
tail in a trap pretended to his fellows it was for beauty 
he was thus cut short ; and prayerless men may plume 
themselves on their deprivation of the adoring sense ; 
but it is no addition, rather a misfortune if not a sin, 
and as fashions in dress have been invented to hide 
deformities in the person, fashions in philosophy may 
conceal defects in the soul. This seeking after our 
source may be newly directed or described, but will 
not under any disappointment cease or fail. Schiller 
says that had there been no Western continent to bal- 
ance the world, a shore would have risen to Columbus, 
created by his faith, on the interminable main ; and 
were there no God or Heaven in fact, they would exist 
and spring forth to the sublime confidence in the human 
breast. 

But does piling make any difference ; in river or 
tide, rain or drought, thunder or plague, the path of 
the sun or basin of the sea, say what of Moses and 
Joshua and Elias the fables will? Prayer is defined 
desire ; but with advance of character our wishes die, 
and is not the -measure of our dignity their infre- 
quencj-? As we grow inwardly, we no longer say, I 
wish: we conform to the order, as good soldiers we 
fall into line and become vehicles of justice, mirrors 
of beauty, tools of truth, eveiy one content to be an 
inch of service-pipe to the purpose of the whole. Let 
us not whimper, but submit to our fate ! But what is 
fate? It is somewhat spoken, a voice; and what is 
prayer but a divine utterance, which is & difference, if 



PRAYER. 283 

it make none, in things. Human activity alters not 
law, but produces it. What an arrested development, 
but for this little actor, were the world ! How, after 
the nebulous planetary mass left by the shrinking of 
the sun, and the huge ferns in the primeval air, and 
the monsters that floundered or sprawled, did it get on, 
but by its inhabitant's will to fetch into existence, by 
breeding and crossing, new creatures and plants, and 
with art and architecture, sails and oars, husbandries 
and mines, make an earth Adam would not recognize 
should he return ? What he does is as solid part of 
the globe as the rock and clod. The dories that are 
rowed under my cliff, the yachts at their moorings, the 
fishermen hanging by their killocks off the ledge, the 
anchored colliers and lumberers in the bay, and ships 
under canvas, seem part of nature, and predestined as 
much as the billow and coast whose harmonious tone 
and color they take. Creation is not substance, but 
form, as in the cattle of England, and azaleas many- 
colored as the rainbow. Are the pigments proper 
creation more than the pictures, the stones than the 
temple, the marble than Michael Angelo's bust ? Man 
is creator or co-creator ; matter the stuff, whose fulfilled 
design is his answered petition, Luther being right that 
to labor is to pray. The aspiration from the jelly 
which shall not end in man, is but prayer in a web 
whose last thread can never be wove. The instinctive 
yearning in the dog and horse to break bounds, as in 
the fish to jump out of water, with a longer tether as 
we are conscious of the stir of cherubic wings, is in- 
grained supplication, an inarticulate Thy will be done 1 
for that will is not something to bow to and be crushed 



284 THE RISING FAITH. 

by ; it is no bent brow over the bier, faint heart in 
sickness and pain, or consent to death and nonentity, 
but ascension and transfiguring, Christ's mount and 
Jacob's ladder. Destiny is climbing its rounds ! Why 
despise the monkey when we are prehensile still, with 
a hold that lifts to new views while it transforms the 
once leaky house mankind lived in? " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do ! " I know not 
that omnipotence changed to the murderers for those 
words ; but, as mercy, it was expressed. The unresist- 
ing and unresentful sufferer, who had carried the cross 
he hung on, shook the world with that imploring 
breath. Small execution had the two swords done 
with Peter's cutting off the servant's ear, less than 
Christ's ordering the weapon back to its sheath. Jesus 
stretched not forth his hand which was nailed to the 
tree. For it to quiver was stronger than to smite. 
Nothing was left him but to pray, and from such 
prayer for pardon to the worst wrong, in his helpless 
yielding, passive acting and mighty impotence, came 
Christendom, new religion and modern history. Chris- 
tianity is more than a mode of belief. It is a move- 
ment of life, a tendency of the race, modern civiliza- 
tion ; and none stray further than those who mistake 
the abstractness of their thought or generality of a 
phrase for superiority to the concrete facts which are 
the issue of living power. God is concrete in things, 
not a notion of the mind. Is religion more than 
Christianity ? As a generic term it is ; as animal is 
more than man. But man is more than animal as a 
type ; and Christianity, while less than religion as a 
name, may be more indeed ; for words are vessels 



PRAYER. 285 

empty or full, and the apples of gold are not always in 
the dishes of silver. Jesus, as an individual, did not 
contain the human race, but the divine sonship he was 
pattern of is more than all the numerical mankind ; and 
the crucifixion was a prayer greater than its back- 
ground of the sky, and with audience beyond it. 

The argument fails, of law against prayer, because 
there is no final statement of law, of which the 
scientist is but temporary clerk or provisional bishop. 
There is no conflict of laws, could any one tell us what 
they are, and whatever act conflicts with them is vain. 
But, if there be any law of human nature, it is this 
hunger and thirst for righteousness, this longing for 
something better, this inhaling and exhaling and con- 
spiring with its cause, which has no measure or parting 
from, more than breath from the air. The unspoken 
invocation, which be}'ond sentences from the litany is 
prayer, is also power, which no rule of utility, general- 
ization of results, or calculation put for conscience can 
match. On considerations of prudence we let slavery 
alone. The}', who tried to forecast the issue of a 
breach with it, saw only a pit of blood. Into what 
pathos and sublimity of fancy, to rival Milton's des- 
criptions of hell, Mr. Webster's eloquence in that direc- 
tion rose ! The mistake was, not remembering that 
duty goes beyond sight. When we were driven by the 
spirit to fight the devil in that wilderness of sin, our 
feet trod the only path of safety, though to mortal 
vision overhung with mist of logic and dust from the 
strife of words. The understanding is an atheist when 
it contradicts the moral sense which is no balance of 
probabilities, but the voice of God. To him,impelling, 



286 THE RISING FAITH. 

as weighing, must be left. Who would have forecasG 
a deeper feeling now at the South of the curse of 
slavery than abolitionists could express, as none knows 
what a cancer is but he from whose flesh it has been 
cut ! One may surmise the providential permission of 
slavery to cleanse the nation, else dissolved in the lux- 
ury of unbounded material success. Our order of 
nobility was instituted when all that passed among us 
for prosperity and rank became joyful sacrifice and 
atonement for sin ; and henceforth our dignity is not 
wealth, but its use. Once riches was bowed to ; now 
it must build colleges and halls and beget charities, to 
win respect. Self-consequence feeds on consequence ; 
and consequential people lose their root when the com- 
mon reverence is withdrawn. So opulence learns how 
large part is beneficence of the worth of its pile. So 
long as humanity finds its meaning in divinity, bounty 
that looks to no dividend is supplication in the 
best form. When we are happy in our situation, we 
feel we must pay some tax and toll of work or alms to 
the general good ; as the monk seeking his cell and 
ascetic wearing his hair shirt in token of obligation, 
interest us more than any in fine linen and sump- 
tuous fare. Tasks are the bead-roll of true devotion ; 
and my prospect of island and beach and the open sea 
breaking in thunder on the reef, with the green wooded 
horizon's belt, and buckle of the blue offing, is no de- 
light but a rebuke, if I omit my daily stint. What is this 
element, we live on more than pleasure or a feast, as 
the tree thrives on ether more than earth ? Momentary 
breath is more important to the body than occasional 
bread; and this impalpable element of communion 



PRATER. 287 

turns to a solid frame. The Lord lets not Elijah stay 
in his cave, but sends him out to anoint a king. Says 
a late writer, thought is will in solution and will is 
thought expressed. So faith is potential work and 
work resolved faith, and prayer empty wind till tran- 
substantiated for its true answer into deed. Said 
Eliza Follen, I could die with pleasure hearing the 
slave was freed. Of the world I can make but an 
affection of my constitution ; but moral gravitation is 
a higher law, to hold though the bands of Orion be 
loosed. The North and South fought a war not only 
of arms, but petitions that crossed in the sk}^, and we 
know which were scattered on the breeze. What 
prayer-gauge can make these deep-sea soundings? 
Prayer is not an experiment but an act for which the sky 
is not a closet too big. God, thou must hear me, cries 
Luther. My prayer shall prevent thee, says David, as 
though it were a force on Gocl, as in him it is. The 
prayers of the pilgrims fanned the sails that brought 
us, in possibility, to these shores. Not fruitless this 
address, we move, to the throne. To try its efficacy 
by using it for part of the patients in a hospital-ward 
were like determining spontaneous generation by ex- 
clusion of life, not knowing in what atoms beneath 
heat or microscope it may lurk. Christ's prayer, part- 
ing with his friends, or the Lord's Prayer, as real as what 
raised the Alps or scooped the Atlantic, has built and 
painted and carved, overthrown pagan shrines, and 
reared from old fragments of art or nature St. Peter's, 
Strasbourg and Cologne. In this insolent play, as of a 
chemist's acids and alkalis, w^ith God, not only the 
appointed petitioners for the appointed subjects might 



288 THE RISING FAITH. 

pray ! Far-off homes, crews that took not the fever, 
comrades not wounded on the field, fellow-sufferers 
within or travellers by the walls, whom an appeal 
might come to as from the Captive Knight in the song, 
solitary kneelers or public reciters, implorers for resigna- 
tion more than restoration, would disturb the nice 
conditions of your philosophic test. Shall not the 
wretched pray for themselves and tell their tale ? 

" Give sorrow words : the grief that does not speak, 
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break." 

The call for consoler, priest or doctor, as well as to Son 
or Virgin, is prayer. Walking the street, said my 
friend, I wished to stop the people and inform them I 
did not feel well ! Sitting on a door-stone in Florida, 
while the crowd passed by, a dog was the good Samar- 
itan that noticed iny asking look and licked my hand. 
At our wit's end it is as natural to beg, as to bank our 
house with turf. Do sceptics witness mortal agonies, 
or lay away their dead, and bleed inwardly with no such 
stir? Can we see the civil elements boil, or nations 
fence with long foils across the sea, and crave no bless- 
ing on the just? But selfish or sectarian entreaty 
is not prayer. We have had no raffling, said a woman, 
at our Fair, yet our receipts are short, and we think 
God owed us more success. Doubtless God had his 
reasons, and was not the huckster she supposed ! A 
famous Orthodox preacher thinks men have too much 
sympathy with God. How, said one of his brethren, 
Dr. Channing would have been shocked at such a 
saying ! But too much sympathy there is with the God 
of Calvin, w T ho covenants and dooms. Suspend your 



PRATER. 289 

devotions till their object improves ! Even by the sup- 
position that he is a truce-breaker and liar, some 
are not troubled. If, declares a popular clergyman, 
the Christian faith be a delusion, it is a blessed delusion. 
But confidence in our author is the only piety, and 
conscience were not worth having if it made " cowards 
of us all," when courage and heroism are its proper 
effects. But prayer for private advantage is a lottery 
and gambling policy. HajTlon, about to paint a pic- 
ture, prays for success. If he wanted God for an 
accomplice in excelling others at the exhibition, his 
prayer was naught. A plrysician affirmed he prayed 
before he prescribed. Could he so atone for want of 
discrimination in his drug? Clovis promises if God 
will give him the victory over the Alemanni he 
will be a Christian ; Jacob vows if the Lord will go 
with him, He shall be his Lord, implying otherwise he 
might bestow his favor on some other deity ; Luther, 
baffled, demands to know of God if he is dead, and 
Lincoln resolves if we win a certain battle to issue the 
emancipation proclamation. What compassion the 
Power may have on those that would make terms with it 
who can tell ? We prize the prayers of the good : " Pray 
for me," writes Fenelon to the bereft lady ; " I have 
great faith in the prayers of the afflicted." Humility 
is the door of heaven ; presumption knocks in vain. 
Egotism is a bar, and sensuality a blind. But we must 
not pin our faith in principles to our faith in men. If 
the standard-bearer fall, we follow the standard. If 
those who sit in Moses's seat prove worthless, let 
us not despise the precepts of Moses ! The old Cath- 
olics in Germany shear the priest of his pretences ; and 
19 



290 THE RISING FAITH. 

against false mediators it is in order to assert immedi- 
ate right. 

Public prayer is a problem ; the Liturgy is an open 
confession of its impracticableness ; yet despite Christ's 
rebuke how the pharisaic length and repetition are 
maintained ! It is hard to bring sick-beds, coffins or 
any privacies into large courts and mixed assemblies. 
When in my youth five notes were placed in my hand, 
asking the interest of the congelation in all kinds 
of bereavement, no syllable of which I knew, I was 
thrown into a posture of mingled traged}', comedy and 
farce, and resolved never to ask any assembly, like 
hired mourners, to consider my distress. In a general 
woe, which no arms can lift, we take refuge in the Lord's 
Prayer. Yet, however brief and simple in utterance, 
the joint yearning will have room. We cannot see the 
flowers fade, and not implore the human spring. If 
you can hush every heart-wish for the future of your 
kind, then be consistent, make thorough work, and sup- 
press your feeling after God. Stop the pulse and com- 
mit suicide on the instinct of worship ! But nature is 
no self-destroyer. "You must think this, look you," 
says the clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra, u that 
the worm will do his kind " ; and it is generic for man, 
who is no worm, to aspire to his source. If it be a 
mistake, building and meeting are part of it ; the 
belfry is reared in mockeiy and rings out vanity ; every 
spire points not to heaven but a void, and our constitu- 
tion is a lie which the Former tells. But this accosting 
of divinity for strength, not to revive or recover, but 
be willing to fade as a leaf, with faith to rise out of 
ashes and dust, is so sublime it will not lose credit till 



PRAYER. 291 

it is proved that he who formed the eye cannot see, and 
he that planted the ear cannot hear. 

It will make no difference? This the plea of fatal- 
ism, that nothing will make any difference, and as the 
proverb goes it will be all the same a thousand }^ears 
hence. But it will not be so, unless freedom be a name. 
Every genuine act, man is capable of, will make a differ- 
ence, and speech as well as work is an act of the mind. 
Is labor a condition of transformation ? So with equal 
title is prayer. As well say electricity makes no dif- 
ference in nature as that spiritual magnetism is nought ; 
and how foolish the confinement of prayer to craving 
particular things which wisdom may withhold ! The 
devotee never comes back empty, whether with what 
he definitely asks or not, for he alwaj^s leaves the alter- 
native in heaven ; as Saul goes for the oxen, and gets 
the kingdom. It is not irrational or immodest to judge 
of the dignity of a thing by who does it ; and it is pa- 
triarchs and lawgivers, and poets and psalmists, and 
prophets and apostles, and saints and redeemers, that 
pray. Genius is prayer, a certain openness and pe- 
culiar receptivity, like an inlet from the sea or Gulf 
Stream, or upper current the aeronaut is borne on, as he 
hopes to be, across the Atlantic : it is the power to put 
one's self in the celestial breeze, Cowper besought to 
catch in his sails, or on that river of God the Apocalypse 
describes, and be sensibly carried, as one rides on an 
engine, with the revolution of the world ; for the star 
such men as Napoleon speak of is not an orb whose 
sparkle we see afar, but whose might and motion we 
turn with ! The prayer without ceasing is for that, which 
we cannot reach, to attach itself to us and bear our sou] 



292 THE RISING FAITH. 

as the planet whirls the body on its way ; and this is 
truly called transport, for it is the trance of joy, the 
pure and perfect satisfaction of accomplishing the 
ends of our own and of all being. The great actors, 
composers, singers, reformers, have in the times of their 
visitation this delight of fellowship with the heart of 
the universe, that what they say and do, all was meant 
and made for, and they are spies of the host above 
and conspirators with Gocl, whose bidding they seek 
and hint they obey. Try the experiment of taking 
away prayer from literature to have some notion of 
what it were to take it away from life ! The lack in 
Shakespeare, according to some critics, comparing him 
with Homer, Dante or Milton is of the religious sense ; 
that he represents human nature broadty, but on its 
earthly side, and turns the world into a great play- 
house, as though the heavens and earth were made for 
sport. But remove even from his pages all reference 
in his characters to the supreme disposer's will, and 
what mutilations would mar and spoil the plots ! How 
Hamlet and Macbeth and Measure for Measure and 
Julius Caesar and Henry IV. and The Tempest and 
Midsummer Night's Dream would limp and lose some 
of their pregnant passages and grandest lines ! Only 
the mechanical necessity, which has come in with the 
modern irruption of material science, blocks the way to 
the altar ; for, when physical causation is made su- 
preme, the machine is no longer to us, but we to the 
machine ; and the last insanity of making the mind an ' 
accident of matter is worse than the first of holding as 
a mere contrivance, at the mercy of miracle, the mate- 
rial laws. Genius is sanity ; for it links ideas to 



PRATER. 293 

conduct and puts laws in gear ; but the science, that 
subordinates the soul to its surroundings, is craz}' and 
out of health, and must be taken to the asylum at last. 
Could it sweep away the instincts and intuitions and 
spontaneous motions of our nature, it would annihilate 
that for which all its own discoveries and illustrations 
exist. Without a living immortal principle to serve 
they were a senseless, worthless mock. If the upper 
and future vanish from her march, 

"Let Science smile not on her conquered field! 
Xo rapture dawns, no triumph is revealed," 

and it is not easy to imagine that those who with 
lunatic glee would exult in such ravage and waste, 
have ever inquired why or at whose direction or for 
what end they are investigating at all, or who these 
curious investigators themselves are ! The showman, 
as he brings out one beast after another, in his travel- 
ling circus, describes its species and origin in some 
Asiatic jungle or African wild. But our explorer is a 
strange territory and uninhabited desert to himself! 
Did the Norsemen, before Columbus, find out this 
western shore ; and some tradition, to rob him of gloiy, 
reach the Genoese ? It was a less achievement than to 
know one's self; and penetrating to the fountains of 
the Blue or White Xile a trifle to finding the spring 
and head- waters of our own being. Is it, of any voyage, 
the vainest attempt ? The Xorth Pole lurks still in its 
obscurity of frost or flood ; but hoi}' men feel their 
oneness with their source, and all the sublimities of 
history lie in the fact, while every smaller crisis dis- 
closes the same final call. Ethan Allen demands the 



294 THE RISING FAITH. 

surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of God and the 
Continental Congress ; and no doubt in the terms of 
his summons there was weight, as there alwa}~s will be 
whenever they are proposed with right and sufficient 
stress. 

Pra} r er is an appeal for the just decree. Is the 
sentence writ alread}' in the eternal book? Yet the 
reference is part of it : to what concern, a composing 
draught ! It is not childish teasing, insisting on the 
particular thing. We ask the best, though not in our 
conception and against our will. Who prizes not the 
privilege of acquaintance with a superior person, 
though contradicted and corrected 1^ him at every 
point ? We are content to have our opinion overruled 
and request refused, for the larger horizon and clearer 
view. Goodness and wisdom are a wholesome clime 
and refining air to be in, without any flattery or gift. 
The art-pupil, I notice, delights in her master's corn- 
pan}^ and gets influence and impulse, if no praise. 
She learns only unconsoling facts ; she has too much 
green in her landscapes, height in her waves, weight in 
her atmosphere and dark in her clouds ; but all his 
chiding wins her thanks ! Shall we fail of a blessing 
on higher devotions, though every performance miss 
acceptance and every petition meet a check? To be 
permitted, notwithstanding our continual errors and 
faults, to stay in the Real Presence is enough, as for a 
backward or untoward learner to remain at school. I 
confess I do not care whether the Lord grant my 
entreaty or not ! It suffices that he listens. I am 
satisfied to be denied, if I can go to the door and 
knock. If the dear one does not recover, or return, or 



PRAYER. 295 

succeed and prevail, as I beseech, I believe it is because 
of some better lot. No counterblast of disappoint- 
ment shall quench my desire, but brighten the flame ; 
for a good wish is a blessing that shall not stop short 
of its object, no matter how far away, locked within 
what prison-walls, passed through what sepulchral 
gates, or parted by a gulf such as the parable says 
none can go over. Prayer has wings w^here feet fail ; 
no place in the universe is closed against travel ; in 
hell nry loving wish, spite of the doom of Dives, shall 
be a cooling drop on the tongue, and in heaven it shall 
stir a happy throb. Spirit communicates through the 
solidarit}' of things ; the pit is no finality, and celestial 
bliss has always another degree. 

We need this refuge from judgment on us here. 
The human decision of those nearest to our heart is 
how often false and wrong ! By some twist in the 
mind chronic as a club-foot or oblique vision, some 
hypercriticism which makes tragedies of motes and 
specks, some tendency to persist in finding something 
contrary every day, some disposition to look on the 
dark side, some strange extravagance of temper or 
more obstinate dulness how we are tried and repelled ! 
Resistance aggravates the trouble, reply breeds recrim- 
ination, argument meets not the case, and reasonable- 
ness provokes in the mortified friend anger and abuse. 
He could be pacified not by your vindication, but your 
manifest mistake ! What is left but the silent appeal ? 
Your feeling, that One knows and decides, shall be a 
shining in your face, a better answer than all logic or 
any apology, w T hen eveiy other explanation fails. To 
the furious King Henry, Beckett says only : / hear. 



296 THE RISING FAITH. 

No defence, or charge, like such patience for the royal 
penance ! Prayer is a state of mind, an element more 
than an expression or act. Why are some persons so 
disagreeable to us ? They are well-bred, intelligent and 
polite ; yet we are not fond of their society. It is 
because they think so well of themselves. Not in 
worship, but self- worship they live and move. A well- 
disguised }^et ever-felt conceit is the poison of inter- 
course. They never in their thought get above the 
top of their own head, but, like the Pharisee, pray thus 
with themselves. To be lowly is to be lovely. Intro- 
duce me to your God and I desire your more acquaint- 
ance ! Be he Trinitarian or Unitarian, Boudclha or 
Jehovah, typical Father or pervading Power, signifies 
not so much as your submission. If }x>u bow, I will 
bow with you ; for reverence is the indispensable ground 
of fellowship, but no upper and nether millstones grind 
so hard as our mutual pride. 

Eemove the idea of prayer, and the subtle support is 
gone. The objection to its efficacy implies that God is 
external, and so immovable by our mind. But we that 
pray are part of him, and our prayer is part ; and that is 
his ordination which plays such a part in life. Why has 
a child such power over the parent that we sometimes 
say the son or daughter rules the house ? Because the 
child is the parent in part ! I went to the funeral of a 
babe. What a gentle, resistless governor it had been 
of the family, all the larger orbs of existence revolving 
around this little one, every voice hushing at its faint 
cry, every hand raised to meet its want, every shoulder 
bent for its carriage, every will suborned to its pleas- 
ure or whim ! While dying, it stretched out its finger 



PRAYER. 297 

to draw the whole neighborhood round its bier, while it 
was weak being strong. The parentage and human 
kind in it were that might and influence, which we have 
too with our heavenly parentage in us, and to question 
is to call ourselves bastards misbegot. There is no 
more genuine and authentic procedure than praj'er. No 
argument against it is so deep, or language of infidel 
will last so long. Sometimes it so soars as to justify 
itself in the sight of all men. On its wings it bears 
the company, and him who offers it to voice the occa- 
sion. It is not made by the person that begins and 
leads in it. It becomes a spirit, born of groanings 
that cannot be uttered, half articulate on human lips, 
to rise and sweep all on its wings. Feeling round 
after God we touch a spring which loosens this incal- 
culable power as though we had the key to a river, or 
controlled the wind. It is not petition but inspiration ; 
not a dry word but a copious flood ; and, after the gra- 
cious drops are spent, it is as when a summer-shower 
cleansing the air has passed, and all things look fresh 
and green, the meadows smile, and the woods take 
their finest tints, the sea that had pointed with pale 
rage every chop-wave, is smoothed by the descending 
deluge, and not a mote overhangs the traveller's road. 
Such triumph to purge and calm, to refresh and further 
as an element of nature, true devotion has. How, 
despite the blinds and shutters, and dropped curtain, I 
have seen it scatter the gloom of grief ! The house of 
mourning was indeed better than the house of feasting, 
to go to for joy. The guests at this dismal-looking coffin- 
board would hardly dare own the luxury of their spirit- 
ual food ! The mourning weeds seemed to affront the 



298 THE RISING FAITH. 

white celestial robes ; every groan an insult to the 
upper songs, as in the old dreams angels not only 
ascended but descended, and the obsequies were a 
transfiguration. Is it unscientific? Then science must 
lengthen the cords, and strengthen the stakes of its 
tent to take it in. That is not half of science which 
recognizes only -outward facts ; and he is but a charla- 
tan and science-monger who fancies all can be so reduced 
to science ; and nothing, no instinct, intuition, innate fac- 
ulty shall be left for its subject beside itself ! The human 
creature is not a mere knowledge-box. There must be 
self as well as self-acquaintance, as an object for under- 
standing ; and our highest state is rapture, on sensibility 
to beauty, into ignorance of our pains, as soldiers some- 
times know not they are hit in battle, or call the wound 
a scratch ; as Shakespeare makes Hotspur refuse to 
leave the field for a little of his own blood. I am not 
sick or sad or sinful, if I can contrive with the source 
of beatitude, holiness and health, not to know that so I 
am ! Life is more than reflection ; for why such respect 
to the corse which is no longer, though so long it was, 
even your friend's body or form, but for the soul it has 
been the habitation of? At home and in foreign towns 
we visit the houses where great men were born or died, 
and we enter with respect the chambers where good 
people lived. So we stand by the unoccupied tenement, 
though abandoned of the spirit of truth and goodness 
that cannot die. 

Let us pray I says the priest ; and if the effects are 
the answers of prayer, the summons is in order ; no 
exercise merits more place. Said a scorner of clergy 
to the fugitive slave: Your feet, I guess, helped you 



PRAYER. 209 

more than your knees. But for the knees first, replied 
the black, I should have had no courage for the feet. 
No importunity will anticipate the fit course of events. 
The trouble, said Horace Mann, is that God is not in a 
hurry and I am ! But prayer will strengthen us for our 
task and restrain us from impatience and mistake. 
Let us put ourselves into the dut} r , not the event. 
We Americans, of all nations, need to learn that the 
blessing is in the race, not the goal. The journey has 
pleasure beyond the inn. You will not eat of the trees 
you plant, one told the venerable Quincy. He thought 
not to taste the fruit, but did ; for the trees died before 
him, of old age. But his plans for posterity were more 
delicious to him than any peach ; and every good 
enterprise we start is a prayer for those that come, 
though we get only to Nebo on our way to the prom- 
ised land. 

The marvel is a Power that is all, yet can make an 
independency and little kingdom of every breast ; each 
of us being that poor man's castle, the British orator 
described, which the storm may beat on, but the King 
not enter. But the prayer, by which we define and 
blend with him, is his boundary and door. He is in 
the sky, yet not at arm's length ; and prayer is not 
wasted breath : it is his ! Will you figure him as 
mechanic, carpenter, blacksmith, constructing articles 
of certain materials ? Shop and bench, and forge and 
tool, and stuff and all out of doors are his muscle or 
mind ; and we cannot breathe out what he does not 
breathe in. Men like Louis Napoleon consult mediums 
for pecuniary gain, or a political move on the chess- 
board. It is no less profane to beg that my venture 



300 THE RISING FAITH. 

may succeed, ship get in, disease depart, or friend 
recover. I should desire that justice may be done 
and truth prevail ; for then what I pray for is wha£ I 
pray to, and it cannot be deaf. You doubt the effect of 
praj^er? You would not, without it, have been here to 
doubt ! It wafted you on that voyage, some centuries 
ago, among the seeds of things God's servants brought. 
Your future lot is in your present prayer, which must 
precede all noble effort. The first thing in heaven, 
said one, will be to have a good cry ; over what but 
the accomplishment of all our entreaties and hopes? 
But prayer is preparation and preventive too, a check 
to fate, a brake on the wheels to ruin. It quenches lust, 
strikes fire of repentance in the flinty heart, shifts us 
from wrong courses to a safer tack, and persuades the 
Judge to return to its scabbard the half-unsheathed 
sword. Struggling among the consequences of violated 
laws, an executioner's weapon was brandished about me 
in my day-dreams ; but from new obedience the spectre, 
I saw plain, as Macbeth the outward instrument of his 
bloody intent, vanished away. J had prayed myself 
out of the list of transgressors, and was taken from 
my cell for deliverance, not doom. We petition human 
authorities, and will not give up the right. What 
bonds has God come under, into what jail is he put, 
not to hear or help ? David knew with prayer to nav- 
igate out of his straits. The will is a good oar ; but, 
caught far from harbor in a calm, and obliged to row 
home, we have a sense of the value of the wind ! At 
our wit's end, and with nought at our fingers' end, unable 
to argue, and ignorant how to act, doubt rises like a fog to 
overspread the landscape and obscure the prospect ; or, 



PRAYER. 301 

with some bad habit honey-combing your conscience. 
what resort but prayer? As the old divine e 

Sinning and praying go not together. A breakwater 
is not built bolt upright, but sloping to the sea ; and with 
prayer against temptation we meekly bevel our will. All 
have prayed earnestly who have acted greatly. Wash- 
ington, disturbed at his devotions, leaps up and thrusts 
his sword through the panel of the door, and Stonewall 
Jackson is loud in his closet before he thunders on the 
field. Is nut profanity itself an inverted ghastly ap- 
peal nearer to heaven than prayerless unbelief? The 
great discoverers. Newton, Kepler. Goodyear, wrest the 
secret from nature, with study and prayer. 

This is the proof of its reality, that while we pray some- 
thing always prays with us. Does not One wish for us 
what we truly wish for ourselves ? There is more need 
of prayer that the children than that the Father keep 
faith! •• As though God did beseech you n dost thou 
write. O Paul? But he does beseech us ! TTe feel his 
intercession. He. not Jesus, is Intercessor. He pleads 
with his children. ^Yhen they began, one said of 
certain reformers, they were inspired, but afterwards 
lost their hold, as they relied on themselves and God 
stepped out. Did you ever, asked a proud man. see 
one step like me ? Yes. was the answer, the peacock 
by the pond ! " We have a bird of paradise up here." 
wrote my friend from the country, of a woman vain of 
her attire. But the woman goes to church, handles 
the gold and velvet volume, kneels with the congrega- 
tion, makes the responses, misses no motion more than 
a member of the monitorial school.' and hits like a bul- 
let the right place for the Amen. But sickness, sorrow 



302 THE RISING FAITH. 

and death make sad work with the wardrobe of vestry 
or ball. Yet let not true devotion suffer prejudice 
from the false ! A touch on the long cord running 
under the roof of the cars stops the train ; may we not 
arrest the divine judgments in their speed to disaster 
by a spiritual touch ? Piety has been a cant word, and 
science is one now ; but no inventory of the house we 
live in is complete, which gives the earthy utensils of 
will and calculation, and leaves the gems and precious 
vessels of feeling out. 



XIII. 
UNITY. 

THE tendency for a thousand years has been to abol- 
ish distinctions. The threefold difference, which 
philosophy has conspired with theolog}^ to maintain, 
is fast becoming an antiquity. The triad is going, as 
the tripod has gone. Mr. Thackeray said, One thing I 
will tell you, I believe in none of the trigonometries. 
In the practice of Trinitarians, the tri-personality is 
losing emphasis and repetition, dropping out of sermon 
and prayer as advancing science flanks this Roman 
w^edge of the ancient creed. 

But what is unity? Not singularity, but harmony. 
Number, in which Plato found dialectic value, is the 
unit multiplied ; God is one and manifold. Three 
persons in the deity? No, all persons in the deity ! 
There is in life no point, line, angle, triangle. Nature 
is gradation, differentiation, a circle or universal joint. 
So we are not monotheists like the Mohammedans and 
the Jews, more than pantheists or pofytheists. 

" Sole self-existing God and Lord, 
Great cause of all things dwell'st alone " : 

Such epithets grate on the tongue and ear, as they affirm 
(303) 



304 THE RISING FAITH. 

the falsehood of a separate Being. Our speech implies 
an arbitrary Divinity, We say : He could do thus and 
so, otherwise than he does if he pleased ; as the wit 
said, he could have made a better fruit than the straw- 
berry, but did not. Surely he cannot do better than he 
does ! The irreverence were to say that he will not. 
He is not capricious. His freedom is his necessity ; 
nor can he help or change his choice. He does his best ! 
What we love lies on the bed, or is laid in the tomb. 
It is, in the circumstances, his utmost boon, compass of 
his strength, stretch of his goodness, as much as the 
bliss of the bride standing at the altar, or new-born 
babe asleep in the crib. Was he less my friend, did he 
yearn more feebly for nry good, when my life was 
a burden, and in the morning I wished it night, and 
in tha night morning, than now that the cup, dipped in 
his spring, foams and runs over at the brim ? Can he 
devour his children, as Calvinism, repeating the old 
fable of Saturn, affirms ? Impossible ; God sets no 
example, as first huge cannibal, to the Fejees. He 
cannot get along, and he would not be, without his 
children. " I and m} T Father are one." How shallow 
to make that Christ's peculiarly ! Nature, humanity ' 
what mean these modern words but unity in all nations' 
blood and creation's frame, the reappearance of the 
same power in some new travesty or disguise? The 
electric spark, heaven's shining is packed in anthracite, 
to turn to heat again in } T our grate and the sun dug from 
his burial in Pennsylvania coal : wiry not fallen Lucifer 
to become a good angel again among the " ever bright 
and fair"? Everywhere the resistless unity runs its 
telegraph. Unpardonable sin is explained away, eternal 



UNITY. 305 

punishment dare not show its head ; the captured 
colors of old dogmas hung up in the hall never to wave 
in battle again ; there is a way to heaven round through 
hell, like that through arctic straits to the warm circum- 
polar sea; the awful circles of Dante's Inferno, ante- 
chambers and tiring-rooms of Paradise, and Sweden- 
borg's eternal evil are for no particular persons ! If 
the Florentine poet can navigate Purgatory, any Eng- 
lishman or Yankee can follow, as the Frozen Bay, once 
entered, soon swarms with ships. We are in one boat, 
and steer to one fate ; all, said Abraham Lincoln, 
immortal or none. Salvation is universal, or there 
is no salvation. Of this conviction, science is the 
voice. Is it hostile to religion? It picks Genesis to 
pieces, stretches out interminably the age of man, 
ridicules the stifling for a general resurrection at the 
last trump, takes down the fences of Eden, and drives 
the angel with the flaming sword from the garden wall, 
abolishes the deluge and Noah's dove, demonstrates 
the impossibility of any ark holding pairs of all animal 
tribes to float over the boundless sea, proves Adam 
and Eve myths of some poet, not creatures of God, 
crowns its triumph by refuting the notion of specific 
creation as not standing to reason or conforming to 
fact, and establishes unity of origin and destiny, as of 
structure and design. In this terrible reducing anal- 
ysis is Divinity left at the bottom of the crucible ? No 
Hebrew Divinity, no god of any nation, rambling 
round in spots, taking sides in battle ; but the friend 
and fountain of all, the impartial sentinel of the 
seraph and the worm, the avenger of the wrong to 
20 



306 THE RISING FAITH. 

a dumb beast, no less than to a beloved son, a deity- 
greater than ever got into prayer or song ! 

But how about the family jars in this little house? 
When the earth quakes, what does it but shudder at 
the sins of its inhabitants? What does the outpouring 
of Vesuvius picture but eruptions more fearful from 
the human heart ; and what but our iniquity and shame, 
is the curiosity that rushes more eager to the volcano of 
wrath, than to that of fire ? What is our civil war but 
the meeting of two thunder-clouds in mid-heaven? 
Talk of unity in the race, when bruised France, throw- 
ing down the sponge, after paying her milliards to 
Prussia, only waits like a boxer, not owning beat, 
to bind up her w r ounds and renew the duel in which 
she fell half-dead to the ground ! But whence the vol- 
cano, earthquake, lightning-storm? Has satanic force, 
outwitting God, caused these material outbreaks ; or 
the first transgression upset the course of nature ? Can 
an}' Baptist, Presbyterian or descendant of the Puritans, 
dull of taste and devoid of fancy, deny that the 
beauty of the world rises from these convulsions, heav- 
ing it from its dead level to make mountains the parents 
of rivers and sieves of soils, for grains and flowers 
through a thousand gardens and fields ; and with their 
tremendous shoveling dig a cistern for the sea ? How 
then about the passions, of which these throes are 
nature's tongue? Have they circumvented the Most 
High? Was the disobedience of Adam and Eve His 
disappointment and surprise, and did he repent making 
man ? Have we turned his line of march ? No ; sin 
is part of his plan as much as the deluge that drowns 
it. He put anger in the breast as he pent up the central 



UNITY. 307 

fire and kindled the ragings of strife, that make histcny, 
as surely as those that lifted Teneriffe, Milton's type 
of the devil, a huge straw through the boiling sea. 
Does the excessive passion or inordinate act because 
foreseen, preappointed and utilized, cease to be sin 
and shame? Not at all! No philosophy has ever 
succeeded in cancelling conscience, or drawing the 
teeth of remorse. That art of dentistry is uninvented ! 
They will gnash at and bite into }'our falsehood, rob- 
bery, treachery, lust, none the less that these wrongs 
turn out the sharpest tools in the chest, whetted like 
the surgeon's lancets and drills. For my optimism 
never fear ! It will not make me fall in love with my 
pride and envy, or any man's murder or fleshly vice, 
more than with pain and anguish shooting through my 
frame. If God is answerable to prove all without alloy 
to the last dime in his treasury, I, as part of him, 
for my disposition and conduct must answer too ; and, 
if the upshot be blessed, the reckoning will be severe. 

Say what we will of disunity among nations or men, 
there is a longing after it in the heart of our race. 
Quarrel we Yankees with our English stock as we will ; 

11 Yet still, from either beach, 
The voice of blood shall reach, — 
We are one" 

Whatever low elements mingle in such movements, 
the Commune and International show, through all dis- 
tinctions of peoples and classes, human creatures the 
same stuff ; none to be denied a place at the table or 
confined to the kitchen, or kept at a side-board, or 
thrust out of doors. No pure hatred in the Parisians 



308 THE RISING FAITH. 

threw the petroleum or pulled clown the column on the 
Place Vendome. With meaner motives mingled a 
sublime sacrifice of French glory to a cosmopolite aim. 
Are these strikes, that run from the Warwickshire 
peasants to the bricklayers in New York, expressions 
of animosity, or assertions of fellowship? Let us go 
shares, say the weaker creatures to the lion of capital ; 
and, though he growls over what he has heaped up and 
set apart for himself, he looks prudently round at the 
number of claimants, and will come down. 

Unity is the sense of unity, not a birthmark or birth- 
right, like an heir's title to his property ; but an earn- 
ing of property to be realized yet. We talk of the 
simplicity of a child. There is no such thing. Sim- 
plicity is the last result of character. The child is 
simple if that is to be without disguise. But it dwells 
in multitude, is very complex, has never analyzed its 
nature or disentangled itself from its toy or nurse. It 
is a peninsular part of the mainland of its kind ; an 
undivided lot, an unredeemed territory, a mass of 
inclinations, a life without object, as the Latin writer 
describes it, taking up or laying down without knowing 
why. It has no divine filial consciousness. It is a 
miniature of human ancestry. Many progenitors rolled 
up small with their ambitions and appetites lie 
asleep, or just begin to stir at the base of its brain. 
It is not properly speaking young ; but comes a vet- 
eran upon the stage, a chip of the old block, and shows 
features of body and mind from before the Flood. 
Only as conscience and love and the Holy Ghost begin 
to work or play, it modifies this inherited type, and 
becomes personal, one with God, his servant and son. 



UNITY. 309 

What a delusion to say we are by nature the children 
of God ! The apostle says we are by nature the chil- 
dren of wrath. Only by the spirit are we children of 
God ; the Pharisees were children of the devil. Sweden- 
borg said, The oldest angels in heaven are the youngest ; 
and I suppose we shall spend our eternity finding it out. 
This unity classifies men. Its perception is power. 
One man is a cause, an originative force, a fresh hand 
at the bellows ; another is a result, deposit and effect, 
dropped like the silt at a river's mouth, made and got 
up, mud and pudding-stone that will take no polish or 
edge. One flows in or floats along, another increases, 
and propels the stream. One kneads the dough which 
another is ! One passes through the street drawn 
hither and thither like a leaf in the eddy, lounging and 
glancing around with no end in view, gazing into the shop- 
windows or staring at the faces of the passers-by ; his 
attention arrested by every vehicle or show. But with 
what steady walk and undiverted look, incurious of trifles, 
absorbed in some theme. Channing, Everett and Web- 
ster trod the pavement ! That man has made up his 
mind, said one. looking at a portrait of Cromwell, with 
its firm closure of the lips and its eye fixed and un- 
winking, like the organ of vision in all great men. 
This, raised to its highest power, was the oneness of 
Christ, which he begged for his followers. What did 
he add to the material resources of the race ? He left 
his father's bench ; he rubbed in his hands the ears of 
corn he did not plant ; he drew and drank from the 
well he did not dig. To be more a consumer than 
producer is to be a thief? But there is production 
above the range of political economy. What amount 



310 THE RISING FAITH. 

of harvesting and manufacture and mining and fishing 
would reach the sum of value . brought by the most 
causal and causative man in history, who did not earn 
his salt, and was " the salt of the earth"? Ideas 
from their unseen springs well into wealth ; nor has the 
rich man's gift or widow's mite any other source. 

This feeling of unity is such glory that in it a man 
is God to his fellows, voices his truth, enacts his good- 
ness ; nor in sea or star, temple made with or without 
hands, is Deity to be seen or worshipped as imperson- 
ated in a human form ! We speak of our friend's 
many virtues. They are all one. I carried a bunch 
of flowers to a woman. Which color do j t ou like best ; 
the dandelion-gold, violet-blue, or cherry-white? The 
white, she replied. Well, all the tints are in the one ! 
The colorless ray is dispersed through a prism into 
every hue of the rainbow, and re-gathered. The 
Blue humility, Red love and Yellow hope lurk in the 
spotless ray. Purity is not negative. In it is the low- 
liness, faith and love ; perfection of white heat. Im- 
purity is a dull and sour, ill-srnelling and smoky flame. 

Unity is from the touches being all in the same line, 
so that every stroke tells as in boring a Hoosac or 
Mont Cenis tunnel ; while mean aims lead into all 
manner of duplicity. Humility is more terrible than 
pride, because it lets the God of truth and justice 
through, till we tremble. It is a travelling judgment- 
seat that shines in the eye, and a last trumpet in every 
tone. Unaffected lowliness is instrumentality of God, 
grand and hard to stand before, while vanity is a feather 
we laugh at. The kneeling Cromwell was more to be 
feared than the domineering Charles ; and before the Iron- 



UNITY. 311 

side saints in the ranks prince Rupert's plumed cavalry 
went down. In the pocket of the dead German soldier 
is found a prayer-book ; in the Frenchman's a play-bill 
or mistress's portrait. Does not that explain the issue ? 
The divine immanence or immediacy is the secret of 
power. If God be distant or second-hand, we are a 
good while about our prayers and repetitions. How 
remote he must be, to take an hour's talk of liturgy 
to reach him, as the shouting Methodist was told the 
Lord must be far-off if he had to halloo so after him ! 
Napoleon says, Victor Hugo had to be put out of the 
way because he hindered God and undertook to trav- 
erse his designs. To further them is the only strength ; 
and genius is putting one's self in their current. Evil 
genius is a misnomer. Talent may be misapplied ; but 
all P oe try, painting, eloquence is moral and religious. 
It is creation of a higher order than any forming of 
the planets. It is the inward nebula condensed into 
an essay or song finer than the world-stuff rounded into 
shining orbs. Self-sacrifice for, others' salvation is no 
wilful generosity or intentional act, but an inspiration. 
It is God's sacrificing his child or himself in his child ! 
He that was before Abraham, brings an Isaac to the 
altar ! As my friend's husband sails with his com- 
panion in the bay, the boat is struck with a squall. 
He cries out, from the tiller he sticks to : Hand the 
jib, bale out, don't catch your foot, look out for your- 
self; and goes down himself in the settling stern, 
while his fellow leaps out and swims ashore. AVe call 
it virtue or disinterestedness. It was what he could 
not help ; no premeditated purpose or merit ! A spirit 
wrought through him to sublime action and perfect 



312 THE RISING FAITH. 

joy. He was at one with his Maker, and in heaven 
in his thought. 

This unity is immortality. In it you cannot doubt, 
more than God does. To argue the question, to lean 
on a miracle, to take another's word or testimony, to 
plead a written promise, to quote the Bible for proof, 
is to deny the faith. You believe not your destiny 
when }^ou question it. In your figure of the valle}' and 
shadow of death 30U are fallen from grace. Resurrec- 
tion indeed? For the body how undesirable. God 
spare us that ! We want not to see ourselves or one 
another in these old carcases, fished from the ground 
like rags from the gutter. Can the soul descend, that 
it should need to rise? " Destroy this temple, and I 
will raise it up ; " " he spake of the temple of his 
body." Who believes that material phantom of flesh 
has gone to glory? Once dead, said one, i" do not ex- 
pect to be able to pick myself up. She felt no identity 
with her cause, like him who said, " Thou wilt not 
leave my soul in the grave." The piety, that could not 
part itself from its object, put its confidence into that 
psalm, and did not want any ghost to keep up its 
courage ! Did the Oriental Niricana mean annihi- 
lation of personal being, or surrender of private will? 
With the particular professor every doctrine varies its 
sense ; for in no form of words can any idea be held. 
If that idea be harmony of the human with the divine, 
so complete that the finest listening can detect no jar, 
it is not death, but the acme of life. We are not 
immortal b}' monopoly of any good. On what busi- 
ness fly the angels of sickness and sorrow and death, 
but to overcome what separates us from our source and 



UNITY. 313 

our kind ; and, like certain birds of raven plumage, 
when they spread their wings, disclose hues of gold 
and crimson underneath ! Compunction for sin, the 
blackest visitant of all, hides the bright ascension but 
for awhile. Without sin, no saint ! A faultless person? 
Some Jesus, that never in any extremity hesitated, or 
in whatever access of emotion went beyond or left the 
mark? What an uninteresting individual, what a mon- 
ster of excellence ! No ; the cup trembled in his hand. 
He did not see his Father sometimes ! He, the Father, 
had vanished away into God. " My God, my God, why 
hast Thou forsaken me ? " But he forsook not God ! 
He would not be shaken off. He clung to the arm 
that was letting down to drown him in the flood ; 
and which, because he was willing to be drowned, 
lifted him back, not to earth, but paradise. An im- 
peccable, immaculate creature? That is not God's 
way with any one. Out of shadow rises our sun of 
righteousness, as well as the day-star. There is a blue 
streak in all our joy and nobility. Those other two 
tears, Milton paints in Eve's eyes, from her fear of 
offence to her mate, are her best beauty. Sin is the 
sense of sin ; and the sense of it is the pledge of honor. 
Without it in my education I would not wish to be ! 

Religion, in this feeling of unity, which is the foun- 
dation of moralit}' , excludes egotism. Why does it 
seem so ridiculous for a man to tell us of his virtues 
and good deeds ? Because they are not his, more than 
the spring you dip your pail into. People sometimes 
speak of their charities, how much they have given for 
this cause or that. The disbursing agents of the gov- 
ernment might as well be proud of the rewards and 



314 THE RISING FAITH. 

pensions they distribute by law ! Where did you get 
what you give, but b} r putting your hand into the 
King's treasury? He trusts more to one than to 
another ; nor can we say of his, as of some presiden- 
tial appointments, that they are not good, that he 
favors the bad by keeping them in his employ or pay ! 
But a man celebrates his own righteousness for an 
example ! He is a modest man ; yet he informs the 
public, through the press or from the platform, that he 
is a Temperance man, a Teetotaler ; has not tasted a 
drop of liquor for the last forty years. Doubtless the 
abstinence is excellent, the pattern of sobriety fine. 
But you should not call attention to it yourself ! A 
vain woman displaying the fashion of her dress, a 
dandy exhibiting the shape of his limbs or cut of his 
coat, is not so offensively self-complacent as a person 
parading his moral qualities. You have the control of 
this base appetite for ardent spirits, and are a volun- 
teer witness. What other virtues and graces do you 
possess ? Make a clean breast of them. Let not your 
witness stop at one point ! Let us have the complete 
inventory of }~our uprightness ! You have not touched 
the alcohol, which we must label poison when it is not 
a medicine ? Have I kept the law of purity, through 
all the years of my married life been a chaste hus- 
band ; or have I been perfectly honest, never stole a 
cent ; or am I kind to the unfortunate, and good to my 
poor relations ? When I publish I spoil my worth ! 
God or man is not pleased with my plea of merit. 
Why not ? Because it is not mine ! I borrow it every 
jot, from my Maker and my kind. Blow his own 
trumpet will he ? The trumpet is not his to blow, or 



UNITY. 315 

the tune ! Humility is the only suit goodness ever 
wears. O self-admiring peacock, in the yard, did you 
make the feathers and colors in the tail which, as you 
strut to and fro, }^ou lift so high and spread so wide? 
It is said when Professor Morse put on all his medals 
and decorations of honor, the gifts of princes and 
nations, he outshone any nobleman at the party. But 
genius or virtue can do without its honors or defending 
in court its claims. Did I ever help, console, inspire 
you to a throb of love or with a thought of truth ? I 
was a mere agent, as much as if I bought cotton or 
corn. Do you furnish me with the means to continue 
credit and extension in this great business of charac- 
ter ? You are God's broker ! All the funds and stocks 
he owns. Many a man in this country might have 
been President, but for the mistake of exalting him- 
self, and putting the shining crown of achievement or 
martyrdom on his own head ! 

This unity excludes, moreover, Materialism. The 
Materialist has no idea of the Infinite or One. The 
world is in pieces to him, and everything is made out 
of these pieces ; the elements are parents ; the rain 
hath no Father and none alive begot the drops of dew. 
In such conception what barren sense ! One immensity 
generating and including all particulars, is the only 
rational thought. The materialist begins wrong ; his 
first term a falsehood ; he puts the soul in the world 
instead of the world in the soul. My body may be in 
space, but not I. Space is an attribute not continent 
of the soul. My figure is little higher than the table ; 
but my spirit is beyond the sky. " Put out the light, 
and then put out the light," says Othello of his candle 



316 THE RISING FAITH. 

and Desdemona's life. Blow out the light of reason, 
and you would put out all the lights of the firmament 
with the same breath. The e}<e is constituent of the 
light. There were no shining, but for sight ! We 
think things are without us. Goethe says to the 
would-be discoverer of the secret inside of nature, O 
Philistine, there is no inside ! Nay, — there is no out- 
side ! Is that study-chair outside of me ? My mother 
rocked me in it when I was a two-years' child. As I 
look at it, in my fancy it moves from the room and the 
moment, fifty years back and a hundred miles away. 
As I dream,I find myself once more in my mother's lap. 
I hear the regular strokes on the sanded floor as she 
swings the four rude wooden legs to and fro, back and 
forth, to hush me to sleep. Is it so much stuff and 
carpentry ? Take out of the chair what my thoughts, 
memories, affections, associations put into it, and how 
much of the chair would be left? Anything is what 
we make it with our thought. The parishioner meet- 
ing his minister, in front of the West Boston Church, 
asked him if he did not think it the handsomest one in 
town ! What painters his eyes were, what a decora- 
tor his fancy, what a gilder and carver his memory, 
and what a beautifier his heart ! 

What is the great globe, apart from our conception, 
and the history of its inhabitants ? A mere mud-ball, 
its core a rock ! But how different, occupied with 
swarming tribes of animals and men, traversed with 
ships and cars, caravans and balloons, measured on 
the sliding-scale of all the heavenly orbs, and put into 
the orrery of our mind ! The earthquake that shakes it, 
and the volcano that relieves, have scientific dignity in 



UNITY. 317 

the observer's view. The primary and secondary 
properties are lent to matter by the mind, without 
which it would have no properties. The Spiritualist 
is the proper materialist ; for he alone makes any ac- 
count of matter. To the materialist it is an accident. 
It is only permanent as a reflection of the soul. If I 
were told Europe had been submerged, said one, I 
should not be surprised. " The wreck of matter and 
the crush of worlds " ought not to astonish the man 
whose only philosophy is of sensible impressions. 
He has never cared to ask who he is, or why he is 
here. He does not know himself nor understand his 
own curiosity or joy. He is a great baby, who coasts 
along by the continent of his- own nature and has not 
separated himself from the gross whole to see and play 
his part in the finer spiritual all, by and through and 
over which he is with God. " Help must come from 
without, from God": " He is at an infinite remove 
from man," say the Methodist brother and Congrega- 
tional paper. As if God were without afar and could 
turn his back on us. He has no back to turn ! He is 
all countenance, pure evangel, to his palace no back 
door. It fronts everyway; and if Jesus hated even 
the Scribes and Pharisees, he was in error so far. 
There is love for the sinner in the denunciation of his 
sin ; or no right to denounce ! The moment of our 
aversion from a fellow-being we are sinners ourselves, 
astra}^ from the fold and off the track, denying our own 
birthright. To trust God is to affirm that there is no 
fatalit} r . No fragment he will not gather up, flaw he 
will not mend stronger than ever ; no atom of matter 



318 THE RISING FAITH. 

he will throw away, or morsel of humanity he will not 
save. 

This faith is the spring of excellence, for it makes us 
like the one we believe in, with a temper that glorifies 
every Beet, of Calvin or Luther, elders or deacons, 
presbyter and Quaker, Jew and Christian, reason and 
Rome. I called at the Carney Hospital to see a 
Unitarian brother minister long and sorely tried with 
disease of the eyes. A sister, in dark dress, but with 
a broad square white hat as a halo on her head, 
answered the bell. Doubting my admission, I said 
the invalid had been a class-mate of mine, and I thought 
it possible he might like to see me. He ivould indeed, 
replied a soft and holy voice, but this very day he has 
gone. As I turned, I lingered to make conversation 
of one word more with the woman that seemed peculiar, 
apart from the world, and consecrated to her task ; and 
I said, He is a good man. Her quiet face kindled, 
and was full of a pure light, as she cried, He is a 
little child! I said to myself, What quality is in that 
look and manner, such a contrast in our community where 
the fashion of many young women renders home before- 
hand expensively impossible, and the driving of the 
men is like that of Jehu ? Protestants have not only 
to teach, but learn of Catholics. Away with our con- 
ceit of superior wisdom in our order or connection of 
Christians ! Honors are divided. There is a pattern 
to emulate, as to set ! 

Religion, being unity, is the Commonwealth. Call 
nothing common, sa3^est thou O Peter ? I shall call every- 
thing so ! Common is the noble word. I own part of 
Boston Common, said Father Taylor, but which part I 



UNITY. 319 

will not tell. That is most precious which nobody can 
appropriate. Not on the splendid dwelling, Public 
Library or church, that make the architectural fringe 
of yonder open acres, does the eye rest with such 
pleasure as on the space free to every foot where Dem- 
ocrat and Republican meet, and do not jostle ; Unitarian 
and Calvinist pass with a smile ; the mechanic treads 
on the heels of the millionaire ; the boys coast, rich 
and poor, over the snow in winter ; the baby's carriage 
is drawn safe as a locomotive on the track, and the 
birds sing in the branches over all ! God is the Com- 
mon of our souls. You will never find your joy 
or virtue in any separate possession, but in what you 
take or travel to with the rest of your race. There is, 
in the State of Maine, a beautiful basin of waters, 
called Merry-Meeting Bay. Several streams, instinct- 
ively seeking each other from wide tracts of territory, 
flow into one. It is an image of commingling souls. 
It is Moore's figure in his familiar song, 

" And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace." 

We meet in one body because we believe, despite 
difference of opinion, there is for us all one truth. 
Pictures of many artists and opposite schools line the 
same gallery, because we know there is but one beauty 
after which ever}' stroke of every pencil strives. The 
case is tried in court because we are sure there is 
an award of eternal justice, could we find it out. Pol- 
iticians call their declaration of principles a platform, 
which they can stand on as one man, when they have 
agreed upon the planks. A theological creed we hate. 



320 THE RISING FAITH. 

It bursts with the growing knowledge it cannot contain 
or confine. Yet the creed is made by this same love 
of unity. I could not abide a liturgy, but forms of 
worship and books of common prayer express the long- 
ing for unison. Liberty, progress, exploration of new 
paths, cries the reformer. But your army or expedi- 
tion must not be all scouts. The main bocly, under 
strict discipline of rank and file, must march in com- 
pact order. We are pleased with by-paths we discover ; 
but, when we go on a journey, we take the common road. 
People amuse themselves and instruct us as to the condi- 
tion of the community by counting the passengers and 
vehicles in an hour or clay along some frequented street 
or at some crowded corner. The numbers are nought 
to those in certain currents of feeling and tracks of 
faith. Blessed constitution of human nature, without 
which society would have no cement, history no exist- 
ence, because events would have no continuity ! How 
it furthers us, to have an understood method of help, 
greeting and good-will ; to nod, bow, shake hands, 
lift the hat, bid good-evening, and not begin again 
every time to convince everybody of our dispositions 
and designs as if we were proving a sum in Colburn, or 
theorem in Euclid ! I am pleased with your serpentine 
avenue, but when I want to get on, give me the turn- 
pike ! Your pretty private fancy diverts me ; but I 
advance by the Common Law. 

This is the value of the Church. It is a road which 
generations travel, smooth and level for infant feet. 
We learn to walk not in a forest, but on a floor ; and 
we train our children not in a wilderness of specula- 



UNITY. 321 

tion, but in the ways of general belief and common 
sense. 

The Bible is a road. How the fathers kept it, and 
the sons, however they mend or lengthen it, must 
keep on ! You tell me there is other literature, ancient 
and modern, just as good. You quote sentences and 
beg me to compare. Did not Confucius state the 
golden rule as well as Jesus ? Have not the Mahom- 
etan and Hindoo books as wise sayings as those of 
Moses, Solomon or Paul? No doubt ! I deny not the 
good texts in the Veclas and Koran. But this other 
Eastern lore is not in the line of our inheritance, not 
the path w^hich Providence laid out for our sires or 
ourselves. This Bible is our intellectual road, the 
main trunk, at least, whatever branches we switch 
off into. This Old and New Testament are the double- 
track by which our tribes, families and civilized races 
come and go ! I visited a woman, aged and sick in 
her chamber. You can read or be read to? I inquired. 
I read the Bible, she answered, with much comfort. 
"What is the secret and charm about this Bible ? It is 
but a book. We must not idolize it. We must not 
lean on a Letter. Herein is the power of its spell : 
it is the spiritual road. No more does the level grade, 
the mark of wheels uncounted, the fine dust which 
stones have been ground into, or the straight onward 
line that stretches to your home or the city-walls, 
show where the population have found it wise and 
good to drive or trudge, than by all moral signs this 
old volume points for us life's pilgrimage. What the 
feeble woman read by her bedside, she did not read 
alone or for the first time. Her husband, before he 
21 



322 THE RISING FAITH. 

died, had perused the same page. Her parents, ere 
she was born, had pondered it. Her children over her 
coffin, at her grave, after the places that had known and 
should know her no more, would turn over the same 
leaves, by which myriads not of her kindred had 
been, and were still to be consoled. It is no private 
or household utensil that you handle in this book, but 
a compound battery. It runs through all ages and 
reaches into all lands. I feed on it as I do on corn 
and wheat, because it is the sustenance of my kind, 
proved wholesome by great and wide and long expe- 
rience. Do the parables teach, or beatitudes cheer 
you? 'Tis partly that such multitudes have been 
taught and cheered ! Jesusi wept in Gethsemane ; but 
other tears than his have fallen in the garden, which 
more persons have visited than ever crossed the sea or 
beheld Palestine save iu that holy imagination, which, 
and no so far off region, makes the Holy Land. How- 
ever bad in spots, to need mending, it is the good old 
road ! 

Physics and metaphysics agree in this principle of 
correlation without and communion within, of oneness 
everywhere, which all diversity and variety but publish 
and subserve. Our commonwealth, the disciples' hav- 
ing all things in common, the communion of the Lord's 
Supper and of the Holy Ghost hint this logic of unit}' 
in manifold ways. It implies simplicity in the uni- 
verse and excludes duality. Two essences, substances, 
foundations are not. There is no room for sin as a 
reality, or for Satan as a rival of God, or for hell as a 
doom of eternal woe. Sin is want of harmony, colli- 
sion with the law, which we do not break, but which 



UNITY. 323 

breaks us ! It is coldness from lack of life, shadow 
from leaving the vertical sun ; nothing in itself but 
loss or unattainment. Wickedness is weakness ; delin- 
quency is emptiness ; evil is nothing ; the devil is 
nobody, " a poor creature, " said the pious woman to 
the profane wretch, that told her he was the Evil One 
as he confronted her in the night. God alone is Being ; 
goodness is vital and strong. 

Repose in the Power that made us and attracts us 
to its centre like the sun, " is the conclusion of the 
whole matter." A young babe was brought and put 
into my arms. It lay .very quietly there ; but, as I 
observed, it turned its eyes to rest on its mother with 
infinite content. In those restful ej'es, in which the 
mother too found her rest, I saw an image of the 
w 7 hole relation, human and divine. We turn our e3^es 
to our Father ; He turns his to us ; and, in the meet- 
ing, parental and filial, the universe has its poise ; and 
this living rest in the One inspires a temper none can 
despise, a grace whose charm it is vain to resist. 
Governor Wise, of Virginia, wanted John Brown to 
be condemned ; considered Mm unsafe alive, refused 
to pardon, insisted on the doom, was pleased to have 
him executed on the gallows and thought there was no 
use for him but to be hung. But Governor Wise could 
not withhold his tribute to the felon in court, the vic- 
tim who, on his way from the prison to the scaffold, 
enfiladed with soldiers, surrounded with insignia of the 
civil power, showed no sorrow, regret, resentment or 
wish to escape ; but, contemplating the horizon as 
calmty as you in your pleasure-tour in the countiy or 
by the sea, expressed his delight in the surrounding 



324 THE RISING FAITH. 

scene ! Since Golgotha and the cross no posture more 
sublime, so that the slaveholder had to join with the 
abolitionist, the South with the North, in one rapture 
of praise ! 

It is this outcome, or outgo of man from the income 
of God,w T hich concludes dispute. A famous preacher 
is reported to have said it would misbecome God not 
to make an eternal difference between Calvin, the 
sound teacher, and Channing the heretic ; an unambig- 
uous hint that the former must now be in heaven, and 
the latter in hell. I presume the Baptist Doctor never 
saw the Unitarian saint, and has made some monster 
in his fancy to call by his name ; as I remember it was 
a sport of the boys in my childhood to fashion a scare- 
crow or demon out of inky rags, or set a fierce light to 
blaze through the grinning features carved in the shell 
of a pumpkin. Could the gentle soul, that I knew as 
Channing, expressing itself in such benignant smiles, 
soft motions and gentle intonations, stand before him, the 
thundering preacher, who beats the pulpit-cushions and 
aggravates his voice, would be ashamed and aston- 
ished at presuming to be his judge, perhaps willing to 
sit at his feet and learn the first lessons of charity. 
Channing not on the great roll of honor, lost from the 
list of salvation, never numbered with the elect or 
allowed to sing in the upper choir the song of the 
redeemed ; discrowned at the last bar of the honor he 
had on the earth, the palm and harp struck from his 
hand ! What crime had he committed ? What man or 
woman corrupted ? What man's gold, silver or apparel 
coveted, more than Paul, that the gate should be shut 
in his face, and Calvin, the murderer of Servetus lor 



UNITY. 325 

difference of opinion, admitted rather into Paradise? 
Is u Barabbas preferred " there also? He ma}- be for- 
given ; but if he ranks or outranks his successor's 
liberal soul, it can be for no superior claim he carried 
with him when he died ; and you ma} T call the place Chan- 
ning has gone to perdition, if you please, but let me go 
to the same rather than to any shining mansion where I 
should be confined to the cruel Genevan's society, whom 
I knew enough of when I was a boy ! If the simple 
goodness of the man, he maligns for heresy, were pre- 
sented to the sectarian critic, in personal relations and 
passages of actual life, he would have to own it, or 
commit the sin of blasphenry against the Holy Ghost. 

Character is the bond. As we glide along the road, 
through those little iron conductors overhead, glances 
the lightning a thousand times as fast. As 3'ou sail or 
steam across the deep, something under its monstrous 
bottom outstrips your speed. It is a friendly, com- 
mercial, diplomatic message, to tell of safety, seal 
contracts, promote enterprise, prevent war. But an 
element more subtile and strong must link mankind 
together. It is justice and fair dealing, an honorable 
purpose, a humane sentiment, of which the material 
messenger is but servant and instrument. It is not the 
millions, more or less, of direct or indirect damages, 
but the disposition to repair wrong, which keeps us 
from fighting with England ; and without which no 
specious apology could pass for a legal tender. Char- 
acter is the bond betwixt jfations as individuals. 

Their bearing on the formation of character is the 
plea for religious institutions. We speak slightingly of 
conventionalities ; but a highway is a necessity without 



326 THE RISING FAITH. 

which we could not live. I tried lately to get to a cer- 
tain point through the woods. I soon found myself 
uncertain and astray, I knew not how. My feet slipped 
on the smooth grass or uneven ground, or slumped 
through the mud and ice which the crevices in the 
thickets still held. A thousand briars scratched niy 
clothes and skin, and ten thousand twigs bent like 
whalebone to spring back and smartly smite my face. 
Thorns got into my shoes and pierced like goads, so I 
had to take the stockings off. Swamps, almost impas- 
sable, lay between the hills ; hard ledges to climb, and 
deep pitfalls unawares to tumble into. I travelled 
many miles when there was but one to go ; spent many 
hours when a few minutes would have sufficed ; and 
nry forenoon went in winding in and out, up and down, 
round and about, till I was nearly lost, and glad to get 
out upon the county-road, rush to the cars, and not 
miss the last train ! Forms of belief and worship are 
social bonds. In the nullification-days a friend, find- 
ing General Jackson in low spirits, condoled with him 
by saying he thought the political peril would soon 
pass. O, said the brave President, it is not Mr. Cal- 
houn's South Carolina doctrines that are troubling me, 
but these divisions in the Methodist Church. Look to 
the links and buckles in the tackling of the mighty 
team ! A cord bursting, that had bound some guides 
and travellers together on the Matterhorn, several of 
them slid and fell to the bottom of the mountain. Dis- 
ruption of the social tie lends to worse calamity. It 
was a touching symbol, at the hanging of a criminal 
by the Vigilance Committee in California, when all the 
citizens took hold of the rope. Liberty first and Union 



UNITY. 327 

afterwards, wrote m}' friend for his motto ; but union 
is the condition, not the supplement of liberty. With- 
out a tribunal, what were the lock of teams in the 
street, to the inextricable jam of human concerns? 
Take your own place in the procession ; that is kind- 
ness to others as justice to yourself. But go alone, 
heedless of his neighbor, who can ? Crusoe, Selkirk, 
Mungo Park is but half a man. 

" Ere the base laws of servitude began, 
When wild in woods the noble savage ran? " 

Indeed, is the savage, living on chance game or berries 
in the woods, free as the citizen? Dogma or ritual has 
a claim, apart from its absolute truth or beauty, as an 
attempt of human creatures to cling together ; for the 
hope of mankind is common. No individual would 
think of shooting the gulf alone ! Union of mutual 
affections is the suspension-bridge on which we expect 
to cross. All human souls are notes in the great mu- 
sician's symphony, which rings from the harmony of 
his attributes, for Beethoven and Schubert to overhear 
and jot down in their scales and scores. Can he spare 
from his orchestra one instrument or tone? If his, 
like the pianist's hands, must span every octave of the 
keys, and use combinations which no arithmetic could 
count, then whoever can add one strain of softest vi- 
bration, or interval of silence betwixt the chords, con- 
tributes to the tune. I heard a bird sing on the Cape, 
mid thunder and lightning, rain and hail. He believed 
not in destruction, but the sun, life and light. Your 
doubt of surviving is in your own separation from deity. 
But God is unit of which every spirit is a fraction. If 



328 THE RISING FAITH. 

an atom fall, the integer is gone. " Our life is a vapor 
that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth 
away" ; but the vapor .is not destroyed ; who shall tell 
in what shape of glory it shall reappear in the eternal 
sky? M}^ soul but a drop? Yet the drop is everlast- 
ing as the sea ; and the drops commingle. I thought 
my brother, who roars and thunders in the desk on 
Sunda}', would shut me out of bliss. I meet him in a 
w T eek-da} T by the way or in the cars, and he is no savage 
maul of heretics, no flail to thrash a Radical, but gra- 
cious as a Unitarian brother in his caress. 

But the desire to live, some call egotistical and sel- 
fish. Not if one personate God, and voice his truth ! 
You may never say I, but be silent in company, as 
William of Orange, Cromwell, Hawthorne or Grant ; 
and yet seek }~our own interest. That is egotism ! If 
the I, that you are, be like the great I you come from, 
we cannot have too much of it, more than the lover in 
Shakespeare's u Twelfth Night" could have excess of 
music when it was u the food of love." 

Pure spirit we cannot be. Some anchorage of insti- 
tutions we must have. But, with all fixture, leave room 
for growth. Close not the soul quite in ! Utter free- 
dom from standards, said one, is like an egg trying to 
get along without a shell. Well, the egg, in God's 
purpose and the mother's care, does not get along with 
a shell ! If there be warmth and growth, a living 
creature chips it, and walks forth yellow and callow to 
the end of its being in the sphere of motion and light. 
Let the Church be rather like the tin}' house found on the 
shores of Eastern seas, made for itself b} r the infant-fish, 
at first a mere dot or point. But, as the inhabitant lives 



UNITY. 329 

and grows, he puts on a wing. He makes a solid cir- 
cular whorl in his architecture of stone. In each suc- 
cessive year he widens his mansion with a new curve 
and paints it with more exquisite tints ; but keeps the 
outer end ever more largely open, till the long suite 
of chambers, which he deserts at last, is picked up a plaj r - 
thing for our children, and a lesson, of God and nature, 
for a hospitable gate. Must door and dwelling go? 
Is our life a cloud, that " stains the white radiance of 
eternity"? Even the cloud is immortal and indestruc- 
tible. Shelley's verse is good for creature or cloud : 

"I am the daughter of the earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky ; 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
For, after the rain, when, with never a stain, 

The pavilion of heaven is bare ; 
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, 

Build up the blue dome of air ; 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 

And, out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 

I rise and unbuild it again." 

In this plea for Unity, Difference is not forgot. 
Whence our interest in the border of the least insig- 
nificant thing? It is that in the very nature of the 
creation is a necessity that things should be distin- 
guished and set apart over against each other. The 
Romans had a god of bounds ! The Infinite One 
would not have divers kinds confounded or confused. 
Did the mighty sum, as some are pleased to speculate, 
spring from one germ? I know not at all, and I care not 



330 THE RISING FAITH. 

much. I but know the individual objects and creatures 
are diversified now ! Man is not a monkey at present, 
and woman is not a man. We want from him no 
monkej'-tricks, and from her no mannish airs ; no mas- 
culinity in one sex or femininity in the other. True 
womanhood and true manhood — if God understood 
his business — are not the same. Unsexed do you say 
any woman is? May a man not be so as well, and is 
he not as often ? I will not say that the soft, smooth 
male idlers that lounge in the street and hang about 
the house, and are so dainty in what the} r eat^ drink, 
and are clothed withal, and are arrayed like nothing in 
the field, anywise approach or remind us of their sis- 
ters, whose privilege is more the roof and the hearth, 
with a careful and graceful costume. Rather these 
bearded, muscular drones of inefficiency, are degenerate 
specimens and warnings of their own sex, despised 
alike of women and men. Be according to your type ; 
and, in favor of God's image in you, leave j'our coarse 
and brutish antecedents behind ! Perhaps you did, in 
the long line of ages, come from some lower form. A 
fish, reptile, fierce denizen of the forest, wild courser 
of the prairie, rough creature in its den, wily dweller 
in a cave or hole, may be among your ancestry some- 
where long ago and far away. But we, your fellow- 
creatures here, would fain have from, or descrj- in 3'ou 
no serpent-fangs or fishy e\'es, no bearish hugs or 
wolfish growls, no foxy doublings or tiger-springs ; 
many as are the people that suggest to us cat or cata- 
mount, the artful opossum or venomous snake. Let 
the generation of vipers sta} T behind, its human sense 
exhausted and spent in Christ's application to the 



UNITY. 331 

Pharisees ! Run in the channels of your better nature, 
and observe its larger bounds ! 

What a charm there is in some persons' perfect poise 
of never too little or too much ; a gracious carriage 
matched with a balanced mind ! It is beauty, more 
than any regular feature or complexion of the lily and 
the rose. No skin so fair as a gracious frame. It is 
but the handsome hem to a motion and constitution 
more grand. I was pleased with a romance-writer who 
had the courage to make his heroine no beauty in the 
common acceptation of that word, of brilliant tints and 
rounded limbs and shining hair ; yet with modest traits, 
so steadfast and retiring, walking the line of decorum 
with such even step and so radiant with kindness in 
expressions transcending all limits like beams of the sun, 
that no member of her circle could escape her spell. 

What but this symbolic hint of a moral quality is 
the secret of our delight in the proportions of nature, 
the arch of the sky and balance of the land and sea? 
It is the figure of human perfection ! This is the 
reason we admire the lawful order, which no hurly- 
burly of the storm can shake or overset. I went to see 
the Cyclone strike the Coast at the end of the neigh- 
boring Cape. Be}'ond all description the scene was 
sublime. But what, I asked myself, is the cause of the 
pleasure in the whirldwind above and unheaval below ? 
Was it the enormous width of the theatre in which 
went on the mighty play of the winds and waves? 
Was it so much gross weight of water, lifted and 
tossed like a feather from the ocean-bed ? Was it an 
imagination of the terrible spiral of the tempest as it 
swept from Southern shores to wrap the promontories 



332 THE RISING FAITH. 

a thousand miles away, in its swift vapor and rever- 
berating din ? No, — it was the bound which even the 
hurricane was obliged to keep ! Had the tornado threat- 
ened to carry away the granite bulwarks of the green 
and smiling land, the feeling would have been not 
gladness but fear. But nature kept her footing, 
and we, who gazed, in all the commotion kept ours. 
In the menace seemed to lurk some alarm, as the gale 
curled the billows' monstrous heads, and hung them 
" with deafening clamors " in the air ; and the white 
caps beneath the blast spread their dimensions into 
fluttering robes of spotless wool ; and every rocky reef 
looked an Alpine summit, cut off, of whirling powdery 
snow ; and over every wharf and jutty and bastion of stone 
flew the angry spray to clash in the passer's face, and 
only a sail or two could be discerned as the} 7 labored 
in the offing through the surge, the flock of ships 
having escaped to port in their fright ; leaving lum- 
ber from a hundred cargoes flung or shot ashore with 
the perpetual discharge as of iron ordnance in the can- 
nonade of the surf, which fell back in restless patches 
of creamy foam, while men and bo}^s ran to take advan- 
tage of the under tow, and snatch a box of shingles or 
bit of timber or stray clapboard from some crevice into 
which it had been thrown. But the sense of solidity 
and safety is never so great as in the turmoil that 
images peril and yet breaks harmless at our feet. 
" Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther, and here 
shall thy proud waves be sta} T ed." The five miles of 
curving crag and ragged cliff were one wreath of rain- 
bows in the declining sun, the old sign of the retreating 
storm, and promise that the deluge should not return 



UNITY. 333 

to cover the earth ; and at one high overhanging point 
where the tremendous break cast the fine mist a hun- 
dred feet above the level of the sea, as in an actual 
shower of rain the rainbow was thrust back and painted 
on the distant vault of the Eastern sky. 

But not without, only within, all this beauty of terror 
had its source and seat. " Deep called unto deep with 
the noise of his waterspouts " ; the spiritual to the ele- 
mental deep. Did the granite foundations of the globe 
resist the incursions of the wasteful flood ? By a more 
profoundly rooted conscience is the tide of excessive 
inclination withstood ! Did the prismatic hues, above 
the ramparts of wave-worn stone, declare the impotence 
of all the watery stores from the tip of their unfath- 
omecl cup to overwhelm the world? Soaring ideas, 
holding more fast their colors, are the token that no 
passion should overcome and drown my soul. Safer 
than the ark upon Ararat, and with a dove of the Holy 
Ghost longer-lived than that which flew out of its 
windows to cheer every desolation, I should emerge 
from a more perilous stress. In breeze or freshet men 
watch their walls. Look to the border in your breast, 
that it be not borne away ! No border without will 
suffice, lacking the boundary within. Have the Tem- 
perance parade ! It gladdens my eyes with the thous- 
ands on the march. But the gay scarfs and ruddy 
plumes and music of horn and drum are but a showy 
fringe. The substance of sobriety, where is that ? By 
what pledge, legislation, prohibition secured? All this 
is but the fence you put up. Do you fence the evil 
out or fence it in? The young men are mostly the 
ones that drink ; not the old. If the young but drink 



334 THE RISING FAITH. 

enough, there will be no old drinkers b} r and by ! 
There will be no old at all ! Drink enough ? What is 
enough of intoxicating drink? O youth, whose circu- 
lation needs no hastening in the veins, nor the heart a 
quicker beat, enough is none at all ! " Touch not, 
taste not, handle not " the to you accursed thing. 

We live in a Border-State to the unknown and as yet 
unknowable land. Does only fond fancy people it with 
intelligences, that are motions of progress and flames 
of love? As well might the seaman suppose all the 
life in the scant}' crew of his little ship, as we that 
there is no population in the region we cannot survey. 
In foreign climes, with w T hat blissful surprise on our 
travels, we meet kindred and friends ! Are there 
among the angels, for us gladly to encounter, no kith 
and kin? But ought is more than fate. Trespass on 
person is worse than on property He that encroaches 
on the sacred privacy of the soul is a Border-ruffian. 
I must forbear not only encroaching on your grounds, 
but on you; and 3-ou must usurp neither my province 
nor my heart. Vengeance, in some form, human or di- 
vine, waits on this crowding ; and half the crimes 
tried in our courts are rude attempts of injured parties, 
swindled men and deserted women, to punish the 
wrong-doers. I admire the courtesy of the ships on 
the sea, as they bend, so graceful at the helmsman's 
touch, under sail, to give each other room. Let us 
practise the like behavior on the land. Do you think 
3'ou own the whole road? is }'our cry to him who 
blocks it up. There are people on the highway of 
society, who yield nothing and arrogate all. Is our 
freedom glory, or a cant word? Beware of the doc- 



UNITY. 335 

trine so rife, and by pretended reformers boldly 
preached, of a liberty in the affections which leads 
straightway to license and tyranny ! Exercise that 
supreme self-control over every appetite which gives to 
character its crown. Let there be a just limit in 
your act, }*our speech. A friend says she wants some 
wise phj-sician to tell her the use of the tongue ; to 
hold it being the only use she has ever found. Rare 
and happy man or woman who has found that ! Learn 
restraint for your very imaginations and thoughts ! 
Suffer them not to roam into forbidden places, or pry 
into your neighbors' secrets, or fashion vile pictures in 
the chambers of imagery, in }'our own breast ! Stand 
in your lot, walk in the path, push not at an}' door 
which would not open of its own accord ; and you will get 
a poise so fine and perfect as to wade, without stagger- 
ing, the stream of death, and find the infinite unity 
not independent of your life. 



XIV. 
SURVIVAL. 

IT is said that rational and radical thinkers in 
religion only deny and destroy. The charge is 
true if the}^ take away and do not replace the faith 
of mankind. But faith does not consist in dogmas, or 
depend on statements, or increase with the size of its 
creed or number of its articles. It is that feeling of 
fealty to truth, and to the divine or human beings of 
whose nature truth is but the telling, which cannot be 
distinguished from love, though faith and love, in the 
church, have not been identified, but too often opposed. 
But, as no love is reckoned by notions in the head or 
professions in words, so faith will abide great reducing 
of propositions. How much of its stock is bankrupt, 
many of its vessels condemned, its former shelters 
broken up and its old kingdom passing away ! Its 
pictures of heaven are faded, and its ancient hell has 
neither cover nor depth. Banishment is banished, and 
damnation is doomed. Whatever is built on false and 
exploded conceptions of the creation must tumble down. 
But faith is not going with the card-castles by which its 
childhood was startled or amused. As well think 
nature and society are departing with their antiquated 
(336) 



SURVIVAL. 337 

and obsolete forms ; with monstrous vegetation and 
terrible beasts, with superstitious customs and savage 
tribes. We do not disallow the theology which we 
supersede and fulfil. But no amount of denunciation, 
fanatical storming or ecclesiastical will, can prolong 
the date of detected error, or prevent the incursion of 
new ideas ; any more than, against advancing civiliza- 
tion, fierce passions can make the Arabs of Sahara or 
the Xorth American Indians permanent peoples of the 
globe. 

The fittest, says Darwin, survives : and as the fish 
with its spreading fins and shining scales ; the bird 
with its fine feathers and soaring wings ; the turtle 
with its dome of spotted shell, handsome as St. Peter's ; 
the elephant's trunk, giraffe's neck, lion's and horse's 
mane, peacock's tail, the dove's ruff of opaline lustre 
or changeable silk, the terrible claw which hinted to 
David God's tearing the wicked in pieces ; so the heart 
of woman, and brain of man, are all steps and rounds 
on this ladder. The best temper, disposition, idea, 
is going to live and prevail over the lower and worse. 
God leaves not the manners, deeds, history of his 
children, more than the structure of a beast, to chance 
or caprice. Creation is graduation, a process of uni- 
versal degrees. Have the eye, ear, hand, foot, mouth, 
for all their marvels of beauty, music, motion and 
expression, been slowly unfolded from ruclimental atoms 
and organs? To conscience, love, faith, worship, intui- 
tion and imagination, arise germs that may have 
slumbered in the skull of a dog, brain of an ape, spine 
of a serpent, rings of a worm, gills of a gliding mon- 
ster that knows but to draw in and expel the water 
22 



338 THE RISING FAITH. 

and oar his way through the brine ; nay, primeval 
particles of earth and rock are on their way to intellect 
and feeling. 

" Thine eyes did see my substance being yet imperfect ; 
and in thy book all my members were written, which in con- 
tinuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of 
them." 

Devout poetry anticipates doctrines at which religious 
people stand aghast. 

But of this evolution freedom is part, preordained 
by the same energy that shaped the planet, fashioned 
every still or stirring figure, and drew the orbs and 
orbits in diagrams of light and endless circles in the 
hollow of the sky. Man passes for something as well 
as matter. Matter is that which appears and is not ; 
spirit is that which appears not, but is. Madame de 
Sevigne says : To appear one must first be. But there 
can be only one essence or substance which what we 
call matter manifests. Humantty is an immense factor 
in the sum. Look at the breeds floral and faunal ! 
What a creator of cattle and flowers man has been 
behold in every barn and green-house, in the fields of 
England, the streets of London and Paris, the racers 
of New York, and the gardens of Versailles and Kew ! 
Is his own the only breed he cannot improve ? Deter- 
mination and responsibility are the equation of weal 
or woe. 

History is God's revelation of what he cares for ; 
and the hope of the race shines and shoots forth from 
the low and bad customs it has outlived and left behind, 
idolatry, witchcraft, feudalism, the inquisition and 



SURVIVAL. 339 

arbitrary rule. If likeness of structure hints one 
growth, how vivid the variation in the human frame ! 
What means the getting up of the animal into this 
erect form, the turning of the paws into hands, the 
retreating of the claws and talons into nails, cut and 
smoothed for beauty, as a bird cleans its bill ; the 
dropping of the old shag of hair that covered the whole 
body, leaving but the silken, shiny, soft, many-colored, 
handsome covering of the head ? It means that some- 
thing more in us than our skin should be fair, clean 
and pure ! While the thatch of the beast gathers dust 
that cannot be combed or curried out, that we should 
grovel in no base habit ; that, protecting with such nice- 
ness of hose and shoes our feet, we should never walk in 
mean ways ; nor, like quarrelsome children, low women 
and vulgar men, revert or relapse to the condition of 
our phj'siological ancestors in the jungle and the desert 
by biting and scratching. You resent the doctrine of 
animal derivation, and think the human tribe began 
with an Adam scooped out of the dust with an Almighty 
hand ? Why then do you growl when airrthing goes 
wrong with you, or track like a sleuth-hound }~our prey, 
or wind crooked as a serpent in your aim, or spring 
out of ambush like a tiger on your foe? These are 
better proofs than Darwin or Wallace can bring of 
beasthv origin, however you disown your relations. O 
deceitful man, you seem to me first cousin to the crea- 
ture in the fable that crept over the wall to tempt Eve 
with the apple ! O sensualist, I cannot help, in imag- 
ination, seeing you on all fours in your lust ! O irri- 
table, peevish, fretful human, are you so far from the 
hyena ? She's a cat I with more truth than elegance, 



3-10 THE RISING FAITH. 

cried one of a mousing, remorseless woman. He's a 
dog in the manger! How many a man of your ac- 
quaintance might sit for that portrait ! What we call 
the eye-teeth, with their sharp points, are in Mr. Dar- 
win's catalogue the canine or dog-teeth ; and the feeling 
of hostile scorn to any one will raise the lip that 
sheathes them, curiously, just as with a mastiff or 
leopard, on the side where the enemy stands. Our 
hoarding do we inherit from acquisitive tribes, animal 
and Indian, that bury food or treasure in a hole or 
cache, to be found on their return? Why does our 
friend, that respectable citizen, not favor a certain 
plan for the common weal? He sees no money in it for 
himself, was the reply. He is smooth, polite, oil}', 
cordial in speech and appearance, full of promises to 
persuade you he would open his purse, and almost give 
his life for your sake ! But, when it comes to the test, 
nothing of the plausible man is left but a sharp eye to 
his own interest ; and the spider's web glittering with 
dew-drops in the sun no more charms and entangles the 
unsuspecting, stupid, buzzing fly, than his threads 
ensnare and destroy. 

The devil has dropped his tail and shed his hoof, and 
become a gentleman. If he were a quadruped, it was 
said of an impure person ; if he looked like a <roat, we 
should know what to expect and be on our guard. 
Watch him keenly, he does look so ! How can a man 
be hid? The tendency of the species is to outgrow 
and slough off old errors and sins, as Mr. Lecky shows 
how many evils have died of neglect. Attention is 
directed to other things, and what was in its time a 
good is displaced by something better, as a bud pushes 



SURVIVAL. 341 

till the brown calyx turns under, out of sight, and 
falls ; and the dead, cracked bark was once delicate 
and alive. Even wrong, said a bold optimist, has a 
use in its place. Will not Sunday laws, sectarian claims 
on the Constitution, and remission of church-tax, go 
without fire and sword ? The noble affections of human 
nature, quietly persisting, demonstrate their destiny to 
survive the depraved ones with all their noise. You 
blame, insult, storm at your meek companion ; and he 
takes it, like the Jew in the play, " with a patient 
shrug." It seems as if your passion would rend asunder 
and make nothing of the unresisting humility that per- 
haps annoys you all the more for being so self-possessed. 
But the forbearance will survive, and of your violence 
the time will come for you to be ashamed, and even 
emulate the long-suffering you now abuse. What 
became of those bigots in Judea who sang out from the 
people to the chief captain, Away tvith him from the 
earth, it is not Jit that such a felloiv as Paid should 
live? I know not, only that Paul survived, preached 
Christ to Governor Felix till he trembled ; with the 
enthusiasm of his eloquence made Festus in Felix's 
chair cry out he was mad ; in bonds that allowed not a 
gesture with the fettered hands, almost persuaded King 
Agrippa to be a Christian, sailed to Rome, wrote his 
immortal epistles with the once fettered wrists ; and 
has come down a power for truth and honor to our day, 
a ghost to walk the earth unseen, more vital and vig- 
orous than any manifestations in the circles, his name 
for quotation on a hundred million tongues, his temper 
for a possession in countless hearts. 



342 THE RISING FAITH. 

The best and fittest survives. 

" One accent of the Holy Ghost, 
The heedless world has never lost ! " 

But curses and ribaldries die and are forgot. It is man's 
business, said Goethe, surveying the criminal scene, to 
enact hell on the earth. The hells, like volcanoes, only 
seem extinct ; the}^ are ever ready to burst up and 
flame out afresh. But, as in the gross planet, by man's 
instinctive art to mend and improve, thickets are 
cleared, swamps dried, the rock graded, the irrigat- 
ing channel dug, the soil softened for all precious 
seed, the forest hewn and mine quarried for grand 
building and cunning utensils to civilize and refine ; so 
the inhabitant is lifted and cleansed. Noah and Abra- 
ham and Lot survive in their faith ; over their linger- 
ing, hesitation and drunkenness a cloak of charity for 
oblivion is laid. David's harp survives ; his adultery 
is buried in the shame of his soul and grave of his 
child. Solomon's wisdom survives, his concubinage is 
passed b}' as the mistake of his rank and time, to have 
its last relics hunted out of Salt Lake ; and the practical 
polj'gamy that lurks among vile folk elsewhere, is 
branded with disgrace by worthy women that claim the 
rights honorable men will allow. 

" The evil that inen do lives after them; 
The good is oft interred with their bones"? 

There could not be a falser maxim. Baseness is disso- 
lution, nobility is resurrection. War dies hard, but 
die it must, as since the savage epoch how with all the 
flashing muskets and echoing cannon it has decayed ! 



SURVIVAL. 34:3 

Capital punishment would have ceased long ago but for 
the unfaithfulness of juries, pettifogging of lawyers, 
and delay of the law to inflict with inevitable certainty 
some other equally dreaded penal ty for capital crime. 
But, with killing so common that the newspaper startles 
us with the heading, — Latest murders in New York, 
has risen the resolve that, if nothing else will stay the 
red hand, the guilty must hang. It does not seem to 
be the fittest that survive, when unoffending passengers, 
the unfortunate rich, uncongenial partners, or poor girls 
unwilling or afraid to be mates for life of greedy solic- 
itors, like notes payable on demand, are straightway to 
be pistolled or stabbed, or have poison in their drink, 
their remains thrown into the furnace or the flood, while 
the guilty assassins escape detection, or by grace of 
twelve men, though under God's ban, go scot-free, pre- 
pared at pleasure for some other game. 

Something survives. The feeling that you can do 
without your body and be yourself in whatever form 
the Power may reclothe you, is proof. But what, in the 
mind, is fit to survive? Some tastes and appetites, 
constitutionally strong when we are young, die or 
diminish as we advance in years, and other affections 
grow and flourish. Religion, says Buckle, is stationary ; 
only knowledge survives ; science is the word we conjure 
with. But the knowing faculty, the natural and noble 
disposition to analyze and explore the material universe 
is not supreme. The angels go not round, with lenses 
and retorts and chemical substances, in their hands. 
Bather with them we associate music and poetry and 
sweet society, and errands of mercy. Goodness and 
purity, harmony and beauty, are fittest to survive, and 



344 THE RISING FAITH. 

will prevail. Intellect, understanding, and even reason, 
serve the heart and soul. Science is figured as the 
sun, the sentiments satellites. But, says Shakespeare, 
" reverence is the angel of the world." There is more 
than one sun ; even' fixed star is a centre. Is not benev- 
olence sun-like ? What information of sense and matter 
should not revolve round it ? Radical scholarship and 
criticism has its use to expose mistakes. But how 
dismal to stop with blasting and blowing up ! What 
news from God and tidings of heaven, in place of false 
and groundless reports ? To live on liberty is to starve 
to death. Humanity, } T et an infant, unable to subsist 
like an air plant on our theories, will hang on the 
breast of imagination to suck sincere milk of the Word 
of God. Conscience may die, but love will survive. 
It is the source and sum of creation. " Love not," 
runs the song, " the thing } r ou love may die"? Not 
only the thing, but the feeling or fancy, so many dignify 
with the name ! Dead loves are more sad to think of 
than aught wrapped in the shroud, or laid on a bier. 
Deep graves in every heart hold these melancholy 
remains. But no worthy affection ever perished. Must 
we not love what we see ? But who ever saw man or 
woman more than God? Only what is insusceptible 
of sight we love. 

" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; " 

but not the spirit that animates with sincerit}- the 
humblest breast. The false king, Alonzo, is reminded 
by nature of his treachery. 



SURVIVAL. 345 

"Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; 
The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, 

Did bass my trespass." 

But all nature is melodious instrument of your truth. 
Is man glorified offspring of beast, and shall we be less 
constant and more forgetful than the dog? God, if 
I be not steadfast, let me not be ! 

Yet annihilated personal consciousness is the doc- 
trine of scientific materialism. Ourselves and all we 
have we owe to death, says Huxley, quoting with 
approval the Latin phrase. The walrus puts its body 
between its young and the hunter's spear ; the hen runs 
afraid from you or your vehicle, but ruffles against 
hound, hawk or man to defend her chick ; the horse 
rushes into battle and bleeds with his rider ; the dog 
will die sooner than desert his master's property ; what 
a faithful servant or sentinel sits in the wagon or watches 
and barks at the door ! Let } T our blow reach or your 
slander forever stain me, rather than touch the woman 
I love ! I join in the song for Jephtha's daughter. 
Waft her, angels, through the upper air ! 

But shall the individual creature survive? The 
creature does not want to, in its form but in its quality. 
I do not want to, as a man, but as an angel. Shall I 
be the same and have memory of the past ? If I be at 
all, some experiences must cling of friendship, joy and 
devotion, under which my mortal clay trembled and 
cracked. But this is, to some, pure rhapsody. Goethe 
says, WJiom God deceives, is ivell deceived. " If delu- 
sion, blessed delusion," both liberal and Orthodox 
preachers cry T . But does God pla}^ with us? Is it 



346 THE RISING FAITH. 

worthy of hirn? The cat pats the mouse, which she 
will race after to tear and devour. Is the Lord a larger 
power of the same sort? If we are mocked on this 
inner stage, all is mockery. I would rather decline the 
entertainment and back out of the world, made for 
sport so grim. 

" Butchered to make a Boman holiday " 

writes Byron, of the gladiator. But the universe can be 
no such an arena for divine festivity. Something has 
gone from the lifeless corse ! " Would you like to look 
at him?" Is he in the coffin ? Theodore Parker never 
looked at or alluded in his service to the dead body. 
I contradict law} T er or priest talking of the survivors. 
Who are the survivors? Rather they survive us. When 
the question arose of compensating the masters in 
Porto Rico, one gentleman proposed instead to com- 
pensate the slaves 1 At some tribunal the time shall 
come. There hangs the portrait of the mother, dying 
too soon for you to know. Shall not your longing 
to see her be met ? Immortality is recompense. The 
love, that asks no reward, and seeks no pleasure, 
is immortal. But can you think of hatred, selfishness, 
a base propensity to enjoj'ment or revenge as living 
forever? Has not your false or fierce delight, in j-our 
own feeling, its fleeting quality and fugitive mark? So 
far as 3'ou live in it, are not you dissolute, dissolving 
like the objects of your desire ; and belief impossible? 
The seed must rot, to grow ; every ctying body is 
such a seed. When a missionary quoted Paul's text 
to a savage as proof of immortality, the savage said there 



SURVIVAL. 347 

is a part of the seed that does not die. Out of a centre 
still alive the barley after fifty generations from the 
P3'ramids has been made to grow. An unperished 
germ is in the stone of a plum or eye of a potato. 
Digging around some old English castles stirred seeds 
that had not sprouted for ages. But it is an assumption 
that the human frame more than the acorn entirely 
dies. What lives and is regenerated in the oat or 
acorn lies behind what you see, or magnify with a lens 
when you split it open. It is the idea of the plant, the 
power which uses up that minute germ. Invisible as 
a ghost is that principle ; and the mystery of recovered 
existence is as great in a stem of rye as in the restor- 
ation of a man. By a sort of death the soul lives. 
When an unworthy appetite dies and is buried, out of 
its interior sepulchre comes a better disposition ; as 
the Indian believes the prowess of the warrior he has 
vanquished is transferred to himself, and it is, in his 
new confidence and courage. So every ill motive }X)u 
get the better of has, into a better impulse, its wild 
energy refined. So much vitality, turn it how you will ! 
Death is the method of life ; and all interment the 
condition of resurrection. As you follow the corse in 
the funeral, let your grief join the same procession ! 
What you loved has gone up ; when your selfish sorrow 
dies, that too shall mount ! Life must be within before 
it is without. Death is the basis of life, in the mortal 
frame. We think the bony structure is the foundation 
all in us is reared on. But there is no bone at the be- 
ginning of life. It is the deposit, in the system, of 
death, — a precipitate of the worn-out particles. If 
the ossification extend into any of the living centres, 



348 THE RISING FAITH. 

like the heart, the whole machine stops. But the death 
arrested is the upholstery of life. The skull, separate 
from the blood-vessels and nerves, is stiff and inan- 
imate, and ma} r be kept in the museum of anatomy for 
ages, like a mineral. Yet it is the vessel of the brain 
in which all the amazing functions of thought and 
feeling go on ; the shrine of the image of God and 
casket of his jewels. A child might think the kernels 
of an ear of corn were set in their sockets like so many 
garnets or bits of gold. But this cob, which is left after 
the shelling of the corn, was not the commencement. 
It is the slight ever-growing deposit of death on which 
the life of the plant is built. This vegetable skeleton, 
in the cane, bamboo, and cocoa-nut, as in the shell-fish 
and turtle, is thrown on the outside^ but everywhere 
is the deposition of death and column of life ; and there 
is a consciousness that responds to the fact. While 
the particles of flesh change with every tick of the 
clock, I feel ready to deposit myxwhole body as a par- 
ticle, and find in my tomb something to stand on and 
be uplifted by. 

What is the earth itself but a skeleton in a tomb, the 
rocky strata its ribs, and its dust the remains of a 
million generations of all the kingdoms of life ! Put 
a fence round the monument where loved ashes repose ? 
The planet is an unfenced mausoleum. Walk not over 
graves ? It is all grave ! The coral reefs, the foundations 
of continents, are sepulchres which men rear dwell- 
ings on ; death everywhere the pediment and pillar, not 
the pit, but the ladder of life. 

An argument for survival is in our discontent. The 
vessel's cargo does not fill her hold ; and she must, for 



SURVIVAL. 349 

larger freight, touch at other ports ! A late English 
writer says : I find God in my dissatisfaction with my- 
self; and this is the stamp of nobility and sign of 
destiny. With all his peace, Jesus was the most dis- 
contented of men, and could find no words to tell the 
strait he was in. Nothing so becomes us as a certain 
displeasure with ourselves. Let my friends and blood- 
relations dislike me ! I like not n^self half so well as 
they do. I am like a crooked street — a building 
whose walls are not plumb — a low damp place in the 
city, an unhealthy Back Bay or Miller River nuisance, 
to be abated ; and my knowledge of the evil is prophecy 
of good. Shall James Watt's discontent at the waste 
of steam from the tea-kettle, or Robert Fulton's at its 
poor economy, be a prediction ; and mine mean noth- 
ing, at the leakage or misuse of moral force? Shall 
the reformer of every oppression find freedom foretold, 
and shall no intimation of deliverance reach the soul 
when its whole nature is prophetic of a motion that 
shall be rest ? You are dissatisfied with nry perform- 
ance ; and you tell me its faults, how it is too subtle, 
visionary and long, and you want more practical 
pungency and pith. But before and more than }~ou 
I am dissatisfied, myself! My remorse is an early 
riser, and up quicker than }'our complaint. I know 
what that ascent of Jesus was, which makes all bodily 
resurrection of no account. The reason he stayed not 
in the ground, was that he could not be contented 
there ! 

We cheapen Providence when we make it mere fore- 
sight of facts. It runs deeper, in that law by which 
the soul disowns surrender, cannot believe in its own 



350 THE RISING FAITH. 

despondency, or submit to the dejection under which as 
a funeral pall it is pressed ; but reacts against every 
unhappy circumstance, raises on its miseries great ex- 
pectations, and flames into love out of all chastisement 
and misfortune, as the hottest fire is kindled from 
green wood and anthracite like rock. This is its own 
augury that it will wrest felicity from fate. What 
form Christ reappeared in, or whether the disciples 
had of him ocular or visionaiy view, is of little concern, 
compared with that persuasion of his real return in 
which they could confront councils, beard governors 
and kings, and go gladly to their doom. This essence 
of the story is, in the mind's constitution, a conviction 
of the future, which is God's accountability to himself. 
This yearning of all nature, from the clod to the seraph, 
to be born and become more than it is, infused b}- him, 
he will fulfil. It is the bond which he will, in wa}'s 
past our anticipation, redeem. I care not, sa} T s the 
seller, how long this mortgage runs on my land. But 
the spiritual territory cannot pass out of possession ; 
and there is no lien on it to lift. Death is the dis- 
charge of liability. Our clay and carnality dropped, 
no incumbrance is left. The sick old man said : I am 
sorry you were not admitted, for while the breath is in 
nry body I should wish to see you. That was loyalty, 
breath and bod}' or not ; and it is this sentiment, not 
conceivable separate from personal being, which has 
indefeasible title to endure. Nothing else has claim so 
strong. It is the warranty-deed of God, which he is 
obliged to defend ; nor do we know any better title he 
has himself to exist. 



XV. 

SIGNS. 

THERE is a new invention of self-evident signs, to 
catch the passer's eye in the street with descrip- 
tions in vivid coloring of occupations pursued or arti- 
cles on sale. Signals, of high meaning or low, play an 
important part in human life ; but all the voluntary 
ones are coarse and inexpressive contrivances com- 
pared to the great system of nature. From the sing- 
ing of the morning stars together over the completed 
creation, to the elements, in Milton's verse, hinting the 
fall of man, runs this idea that spirit has matter for 
its tongue and tell-tale. All that has transpired is 
recorded on the earth ; and if Mr. Darwin think the 
register incomplete it is only because we want yet an 
eye line to read. All that shall be has some index, 
though no palmist or gipsy divine the result. Proph- 
ecy is the gift of such as can peruse the thousand 
signs, any one of which holds the meaning of all. 
Second sight is but deeper penetration than first. The 
prophet saw what Hazael would do, though he was 
amazed as though he had been called a dog. 

" A face, in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet," 
(351) 



352 THE RISING FAITH. 

is but one of disclosures without number. How often 
we trust the unconscious language against the spoken 
words ! " The face is the face of Jacob, but the hands 
are the hands of Esau." What a fond, unsuspicious 
old patriarch it was, of whose blindness a mean advan- 
tage was taken b} T the conspiring, cunning boy ! To 
age he must have added dotage not to detect the trick. 
Through the forms and terms of daily politeness, how 
we pierce by manifestations in the manner and counte- 
nance people are unaware of, to what is meant or 
desired ! Their affectation of cordiality is followed by 
one of grief and surprise that their hollow invitations 
are declined. The nobleman is he whose express and 
unintended intimations match ; and the true woman, 
beyond all ladyhood, takes no part in this universal 
masquerade with visors of flesh and blood. We have 
not classified sufficient^ when we speak of the human 
eye. How many sorts of eye ! The mole eye and the 
eagle, the telescopic fixed on the invisible far-off, and 
the microscopic peering into what is close hid, and the 
meteoric that threatens with its blaze ; the eye as 
superficial and insignificant as a huckleberry, and the 
eye that beams with thought and purpose, as when, by 
some peculiar transparency, we see with its many- 
colored objects the bottom of the deep ; the pure eye 
and that which assaults chastity like a wanton grasp ; 
the eye that is a benediction and the one that is a 
hole in the head ; the eye veracious and of straightfor- 
ward look, so that the whole body turns with it, and 
the snake-eye, appearing for a moment sly and malig- 
nant, then back to its covert ; the fox or lion-e} T e ; the 
fickle eye, shifting like a kaleidoscope, and that unwink- 



signs. 353 

ing one which is said to characterize greatness and 
genius, such as Goethe and Napoleon had. How full 
to bursting with design the universe is when so small 
an orb is a histoiy in so many volumes ; and what a 
hard theory to hold, materialism becomes, when the 
mass means so little, and a particle is like the rod to 
discharge a thunder-cloud ! 

Prophetic vision is not of absolute truth, but an 
interpretation, lightning-like and unawares, of signs 
or shadows of coming events. Weather-wise men and 
animals, and financiers who feel a coming change in 
their bones, observe and sum up signs of which their j 
intelligence renders no strict account. The unaccus- 
tomed lightness or heaviness, which is all certain char- 
acters in Shakespeare can name as on their spirits, 
proceeds from indications unconsciously gathered of 
blessing or bane in the air ; as Mowbraj^, in the play 
of Henry IV., is dejected at what seems a happy com- 
promise between the armed hosts. Some, like Joseph, 
have a natural faculty of prevision, to read riddles and 
construe dreams, and are mediums : others dispute or 
advocate, and seem, as lawyers' children, born with an 
argument in their brains. Signs are moral and open a 
case with the author of our being ; for, like unburied 
refuse where strangers in forest or pasture have set up 
their tents, we find unambiguous hints that there has 
been much camping in our constitution, which is no 
virgin soil but an ancestral muster-field ! The taunt is 
flung at rich heirs that they, in their pride of posses- 
sion, think not in what slave-trade or cheating of spice- 
merchants, in Africa or Ceylon, their money was made. 
But the humors in our frame are a worse bequest than 
23 



354 THE RISING FAITH. 

from any tainted stocks or blood-stained plantation. 
I could throw away, or, like receivers of back congres- 
sional pay, endow an institution with my forefathers' 
doubtful gains ; but what to do with the tradition in 
me of their sins? The}' little thought, perhaps, such 
alloyed and poisonous penny-tokens should be handed 
down ! O dead, interred, long-since risen generations, 
where had you been, to contract for your posterity such 
fatal inheritance of disease breaking out with every 
flagrant sign in their blood ? Were it not a sufficient 
judgment-seat for you, without an}' final upper bar, 
that they are intemperate or profligate, thievish or 
profane, because you were? There is an illness so 
serious, though never mentioned in polite society, that 
in other lands the propriety has been discussed of 
inoculation for it as for small-pox. We conscien- 
tiously shrink from burdening our descendants with 
taxes ; but what imposition of war-debt or ship-money 
or tariif is so bad as this? Within the confines of our 
own organism is an unfinished strife ; and, despite the 
proverb of scorn against fighting other people's battles, 
it is a doom none escapes. Round about this domain 
of flesh we must go, as one surveys his farm, hunting 
up traces of former damage ; and how much of our 
moral task is in these repairs ! The benefit of the 
work and struggle alone evens the scale ; for, as the 
expulsion of bears and wolves from a territory implies 
more than the negative advantage of safety from their 
claws and teeth, so does driving out of our nature the 
wild beast. To improve and adorn one's own country, 
not to conquer new regions, is the statesman's motto ; 
and it is the true aim, in every bosom, of this landlord 



signs. 355 

of the soul. We are in charge of a great estate, inde- 
feasible, to go clown clean or ill-kept to the next occu- 
pants. But we are shadows ourselves, here to-day, 
away to-morrow ; yet with ability for permanent bet- 
terment of our children's and the common lot. What 
is an addition to one's fortune, though reckoned in 
millions, to preparation of good to countless unbegot- 
ten, by material or spiritual lifting to higher vantage- 
grounds of whole communities and growing towns? 
The way you decide some religious or economical 
question involves the welfare of thousands to come 
after. They are not here to vote ; let their providen- 
tial proxies beware in determining their fate ! What 
curses or congratulations are sure to rise in the distance, 
unheard save in the ear of God ! Blood, that does 
not yet flow, may cleave to our skirts ; or on lips, 
unshaped to articulate, loud blessing for our names. 
We could bear our neighbor's reproach or rude abuse 
in the street ; but it must w T ound and rend the inward 
ear to have this ghostly upbraiding from afar. 

Signs are God's honest traitors to us, and suffer no 
wrong intent to be hid. You may cover yourself with 
politeness, wear grace for a garment and modesty a 
silk veil ; if you be of an assuming, thrusting, and in- 
trusive temper, the contrast of the rude design with the 
smooth manner is but more gross. The gambling is 
not all at Hombourg or Baden Baclen or in our ctty sa- 
loons ; and no male or female gamester ever plaj-ed so 
shrewdly but the masque sometimes dropped, the hand 
was seen ; as, in the story, the Red Rover hoisted his 
true colors and appeared the pirate he was. The man 
who plays shabby tricks in secret, at length plays them 



356 THE RISING FAITH. 

openly and knows it not ; his loss of the sense of 
honor being his exposure, penalty and shame. To be 
by others thought what w r e would, the only way is to 
be what we would be thought. But this simplicity, 
which in the babe is the first hint of nature, is in the 
adult the last attainment of character, when seeming 
and being, the sign and the significance are the same. 
It is curious to notice the duplicity some practise on 
principle, and make it their boast. My intellect, says 
one, is a radical and goes for free thought ; my heart 
is conservative and takes in the orthodox, my love 
proceeding though my idea stays behind. Can we 
then so divide and subdivide ourselves ? Are our fac- 
ulties and affections such a chest of tools, and can I 
take up my understanding in one hand and iny soul in 
another, and use them by turns according to the com- 
pany I am in? What part of yourself, my friend, I 
pray, do you drop w r hen you converse with me ? If I 
cannot have the whole, the integrity of your faith and 
nature, I want none ! Here is the sin and woe of hu- 
man relationship that one becomes a different person 
straightway he has turned his back ; and when Jesus 
enjoined love of the one God with all the heart, mind, 
soul and strength, he did away with these mechanical 
distinctions in his sublime command. When my 
mind goes w T here my heart does not, I am double- 
minded and not single-hearted ; but a thief, some detec- 
tive is after, though I never took a cent from the till. 
Standing four square to the winds, is a favorite poetic 
figure for nobility ; and moral worth, like architecture, 
is known by its harmony with itself. How admirable 
this fitness and essential veracity, which is the immu- 



signs. 357 

tability we adore in the deity, and is not monotony but 
infinite variety ! My friend does not always express 
himself; but his reserve is as candid as his word. 
Truth does not always speak ! Silence is its finest ex- 
pression. From a speechless man's looks, in the cor- 
ner of the room, I got more information than from the 
loquacious debater who monopolized the floor. We 
fear we have withheld our judgment because, in the 
formal meeting, we sat still. But as our weight is felt 
in a carriage or a boat, so our opinions without profes- 
sion are reckoned in the scale. A million spears of 
grass, rooted in the bottom and bending one way 
to the surface, show the direction of the tide ; and na- 
ture has as many signals of our drift. All the conceits 
we indulge are but the gay blinders we wear, conceal- 
ing much from us, but deceiving no observation on 
ourselves. These cross purposes of social ambition, in 
fine ladies and forward gentlemen, how pathetic or 
amusing to see ! But, when one comes without pre- 
tence, who sees no ladder to climb and has no axe to 
grind and no trumpet but some angel's to blow, having 
been born and come into the world like Jesus to testify 
to the truth, to the simple and unconscious glory ever}' 
knee bows. How different he is though he know it 
not ; but regenerates us with his geniality and original- 
ity alike ! We are all witnesses, as that same Master 
said he was, of ourselves ; but how diverse the value 
of the testimony we bear ! 

We speak of good or bad signs ; and there is no worse 
one of this age than the resolving of all religion into 
what is miscalled liberty, liberality and love. Love is 
a word of such degeneracy, as to excite disgust. Well 



358 THE RISING FAITH. 

for us it is not the only name for God in the Old Tes- 
tament or New, when men, inclined to pardon and 
commit affectionate sins, ridicule perfect purit}' ; and it 
is taken for granted that what is alive must be free in 
the sense of being foul ! Deliver us from the love 
which is but the soft variety of hate ! An eminent 
Massachusetts clergyman, preaching justice in New 
York to a congregation fed on the sympathies for their 
ordinary fare, was pursued with the umbrage of their 
displeasure from the church-door ; and I was assured 
by a woman that the person, by whose clerical fondness 
she had been enticed, as he handed to her from the 
Lord's table the communion-cup, repeated with signif- 
icant emphasis the text, The blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth from all sin ! In the timbers of the sanctu- 
ary is a secret rot, for which if soundness be not soon 
put, the da}'s are at hand when there shall not be left 
one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down ; 
for Christian meeting-house or Hebrew temple, shrine 
or synagogue, to the overturning and rebuilding power 
are one. When the title reverend was applied to a 
minister, that pastor without reproach, Charles Lowell, 
was wont to quote from the psalms, pointing with his 
finger up, Holy and reverend is His name! If our 
feeling become superficial and sensual, then duty must 
be proclaimed in precedence of sentiment ; for truth is a 
law which no smoothing-plane can shave off; and it 
were a blessing to society to have righteousness held 
forth for a generation to come instead of toleration 
without bound. Peace on earth to good-icilling men, 
not indiscriminately to all, was the reading of the ben- 
ediction insisted on by the Hungarian Kossuth. 



signs. 359 

An evil sign is in our insincere and disjointed life. 
The man that makes the sixteenth part of a pin coop- 
erates to one result ; and, when Webster and Wirt as- 
tonished the ladies by driving out together after their 
sharp battle at the bar, they had served the ends of 
justice by the impassioned presenting each of his cli- 
ent's case ; but when we put religion into a corner with 
which business and politics and societ}- have no con- 
cern, or cast out of our . ecclesiastical communion the 
man we accept everywhere else, we convict ourselves 
in condemning him, and our theology is a partiality 
and not a principle, fiction and no fact. My good ortho- 
dox brother is courteous with me on the street ; he 
covets and courts my company, calls on me at my house, 
eats at my table, sleeps under my roof, comes to enjoy 
with me my prospect of nature or my pictures of art, 
is interested to inquire for my family, puts on no airs 
in conversation, respects my judgment in matters of 
conscience, reason and the divine command ; doubts 
not my abilit}' or honest}^, but treats me as his peer ; 
perhaps he asks ad\ice and worldly favor at my hand 
or subscription to his denominational funds, counting, as 
the Italian beggar said to the New England free-thinker, 
my money orthodox ; or he may be a stranger and 
stupid intruder founding his claim to bore me in the 
country on the fact of his having bored me in the town ; 
he questions not my competency to speak or the will 
of the people to listen ; he will come with them to hear 
nry lecture in the town-hall ; at a pinch in his absence 
for his convenience he ma} 7 be glad to have me bury his 
dead ; but in that little box of his pulpit I must not be 
allowed to stand ! It is his trust, and the property of 



360 THE RISING FAITH. 

his sect, mortgaged to his creed, involving the salva- 
tion of souls ; and he with his deacons must pass a vote 
of inexpediency on any such service as mine, though a 
partisan bias in it no microscope could detect. The 
dullest man, who lias confessed the articles, or an un- 
tried novice ambitious to handle the tools, to whom 
Christ is absolute God, and hell-fire unquenchable, is 
preferred to a veteran genius devoted to illustrating the 
Master's character all his life, because, among the dog- 
mas, the trinit}' is not reckoned on his list ! I say, 

' ' Out upon this half-faced fellowship " ! 

It is time this heir-loom of bigotr}^, that has come 
down for ages, were seen for the monster it is, regarded 
as an affront and put into the garret. Retained with 
sacrifice of candor, or for fear of the consociation, it 
costs too much. It works no harm or hardship save to 
the cause of truth. Personally the excluded and ex- 
communciated smile at it as heat-lightning or thunder 
without a bolt. It is an old lion, whose teeth are 
dropped or drawn, or a wild beast stuffed whose 
fierceness is dumb show. It belongs to a sj'stem of 
passports and spies and petty custom-house rules, and 
with it should pass awa} r as a hindrance to the circula- 
tion of ideas and free trade of thought. It famishes 
the hungiy when there is bread enough and to spare. It 
rends the Lord's body which it pretends to embalm, and 
violates the example he set ; for what did that same 
Jesus, standing up for whom this intolerance is mis- 
named, but rejoice in spirit at his encounter with the 
Greeks, instead of being confined to the Jews ; while 



SIGNS. 361 

there was no Pharisee, Sadducee, Roman or Essene, he 
was not read}' to listen to as well as instruct, having 
an ear as good and generous as his tongue ! Keep the 
peace, meddle not with village narrowness, let every- 
body go to heaven his own way, are well-meant coun- 
sels ; but superseded by the nobler obligation to bear 
witness to the truth, give a reason for the faith that is 
in you, and guide travellers that are off the track, and 
will not reach paradise the way the} T go. 

Under the title of Old Probabilities, weather-signs 
aim at the dignity of science ; and we measure the 
safety of a journey or voyage, and manage to keep out 
of the bristling circle of snow, unlashed by the tail of 
the thunder, and decide if it be prudent to pass. Hat- 
teras or go round Cape Cod. A flock of ships, count- 
less as birds in the sky, take from a dial in Washing- 
ton the hint of their courses all over the sea ; and the 
official announcement now sent to every village in the 
land, hits the truth so nearly, one testifies that on the 
strength of it he kept his cattle from drowning in a 
pen. Into such wisdom the rude conjectures of sailors 
and farmers at last are distilled ! A greater step will 
be to learn the cautionary signals between men and 
nations, and avoid worse mischiefs than of the storm, 
as Jesus saw the approaching ruin of the Jewish state. 
Liberals call fear, even of God, a mean motive ! But 
there is a philosophy of it, how unheeded by Great 
Britain when the Mother-land became our step-mother 
in the Civil War ! She thought our case hopeless, the 
division in the American house final, Jefferson Davis 
creator of a new nation, and the old one a patient far 
gone in consumption, or a castaway swooning on the 



362 THE RISING FAITH. 

beach, who would expire with the wrecker's squeeze. 
The privateers, she manned to reduce us to a left- 
handed struggle with the foe, were the well-ordered 
procession for our funeral ! While the laugh went up 
against us from Mr. Laird's shipyard, we failed not to 
hoist cautionaiy signals, and our minister declared the 
piratical equipment meant war. But the noise of our 
complaint seemed but the death-rattle in our throat, 
till the self-preservation of a great people was an 
accomplished fact, and on a claim of damages the 
pocket of the volunteer ally of secession became more 
sensitive than the honor had been years before ; yet 
her pride is forced into pay and apology for neglecting 
signals she had not sense to discern ; and, while the 
hot blood now cools on either side, a new lesson is set 
in the politics of the world. 

From disregard of the cautionary signals arise what 
social jars ! People blunder in conversation from 
lack of sympathy to perceive the state those they talk 
with are in, and so to understand the signals of dis- 
tress. A gentleman pushes his inquiry into my private 
habits, relations, and affairs, not knowing how I wince. 
I saw the torture applied by a lady, with that indel- 
icate inquisitiveness which is the most annoying trait, 
deaf and blind to the tone and look of displeasure in 
her subject, till on her departure he drew a long sigh 
of relief. The brakeman is aware by the position of a 
black or red ball when the track is clear ; Vesuvius 
gave in the air and ground premonition lately which 
the dwellers on its side to their cost would not reck, 
and we run into mischief through the human manner 
we overlook. In your quiet sail, as you lean over the 



signs. 363 

gunwale, } t ou wonder at the skipper' 3 starting to reef 
the canvas or shift the helm ; and he shows you far off 
on the water the swift black spot of the squall, which 
an expert will detect the tokens of in human behavior 
when all appears serene. As buoj^s with long painted 
arms swing up and down in shoal places under the 
waves' motion, so there are places in human nature 
and the disposition of our friends to be as carefully 
marked ; and kindness and humility are the eyes for 
the look-out ! But there are folk so preoccupied that 
in observing others they see only themselves as through 
a medium or in a mirror. Such egotists are no mag- 
nets. They are unfit for friendship or marriage ; they 
have no mesmeric force. Unconscious beauty is irre- 
sistible charm ; and she, that stoops to conquer, knows 
not she stoops. Instinctive grace never comprehends 
its own marvels. I went to a show of azaleas, dazzling 
with complementary colors. But a human azalea came 
in, with carmine cheek and downcast look ; and, like 
the publican, would not so much as lift up her eyes 
to the heaven she constrained me to look after in them, 
unaware of the spell she wrought. He that pronounces 
not himself, can pronounce truth, dut}' and God. But 
the} 7 can never utter his name who speak their own. 
Wilfulness is weakness, there being no such tool as the 
obstinate man persuaded he is having his own way 
when he is but having yours ; but lowliness is strength. 
The unambitious worker is no copy but a cause ; and 
what accumulation of causative power in him, on a 
misunderstanding of whose word about Peter and the 
Rock was reared the Romish Church, the greatest of 
institutions from a passing humorous trope ! 



364 THE RISING FAITH. 

The signals thicken and multiply as we come close 
together, till the question arises in what degree of 
intimacy can human creatures live? When certain 
persons were spoken of as a band of brothers, the 
poet Rogers remarked, he had heard they did not get 
along very well, but knew not it was so bad as that ; 
and Mr. Thackeray, to a friendly overture where he 
had taken offence, sends back the card with a figure of 
himself kneeling, and the lady, that had alienated him, 
pouring hot coals from an ornamental brazier on his 
head. A system of cautionary signals might prevent 
all collisions ; and it is high time, when pistol, poison 
and rod are getting into female hands. Women- 
haters must wish to give them the vote, if they will 
drop other weapons ! We want a coast survey of our 
own kind, and not only to know yonder is half-tide 
rock and the whale's back and the bow-bells and Driver's 
in the harbor ! What is the use of having your piano 
tuned, and not your temper ? If the husband has eaten 
his razor, or the wife swallowed her scissors before 
breakfast, what chance of a happy feast at the board? 
The case is as bad as of the smuggling German who 
swallowed the diamonds which the customs-officers 
saved his life by obliging him with an emetic to 
restore. Let us learn that our sentence is from no 
stranger but our nearest mate ! My critic sits by my 
side. I tremble not at him anonymous in his great 
editorial office ! I laugh at exceptions and misrepre- 
sentations in the newspaper. But the judge, I fear, is 
uiy partner, brother, sister, child. The last trumpets 
will usher in no trial so terrible and just. A fig for 
fame and reputation ! Do your neighbors think well 



signs. 365 

of } T ou? Do your kindred approve; they, who touch 
and search 3-011 every hour, and no more than God 
mistake 3-our motives and aims? Then be at rest 
concerning your fate! The doors of heaven swing 
wide and the gates of paradise are ajar. Affectionate 
families are thought clannish ; all their geese are 
swans ! But this is better than any of Darwin's trans- 
formations. Leave not those, next you, to get compli- 
ment or appreciation only from abroad ; encourage 
your companions and children, and so give them the 
daily bread in the Lord's Pra}^er ; grudge not a hearty 
tribute, as though they would get an advantage, and 
you could not so well on occasion put them down with 
blame ; and fear not the harm from praise which cen- 
sure more often inflicts. A father proud of his chil- 
dren, but never applauding lest he should spoil, is 
unnatural and unwise. 

Let us heed the cautionary signals in ourselves. 
Every countenance is a whole set of them to others ; 
and, putting the community on guard, can we not 
protect ourselves? How blind each one is to what 
everybody else sees ! I hope you will take care of 
the Constitution, said a reeling citizen to John Quincy 
Adams, on a presidential tour. Yes, was the answer, 
and I commend to your good keeping jour own ! Let 
conscience, not vanity, look in the glass, and what 
warnings appear, of pallor and wrinkles, thin lines or 
fatty degeneration, premature baldness ; or gray hairs, 
no crown of glory, but an unvenerable publication of 
sin ! That people should be so pleased with the mir- 
ror's self-reflections is strange. I met a man, all whose 
former vigor and vivacity had, with ease and high 



366 THE RISING FAITH. 

living and retirement from business, so run to size 
without spiritual significance, that I wondered he 
could put on such a handsome dress of broadcloth, 
ruffles, jewels, and fashionable hat in his age ! It 
seemed but premature decoration of a corpse, and as 
if he were urging himself out! When we notice, in 
early years, the unsteady hand, muscular twitch, nerv- 
ous twinge, red or muddy eye, we ask, What, O young 
man or woman, have you been doing, to hold out these 
signals of disorder and distress as of an unofficered 
regiment or disabled ship ? The pipe or wine-glass is 
a little thing to lift ; but it tires strong men out at 
last ! Seductive pleasure is the herald of burning 
pain. Nature, with inward rumblings and outward 
darkenings, by whirling leaves, fleeing beasts and birds 
announces her convulsions ; aches and languors, neu- 
ralgic lances and dyspeptic lines are the advance-guard 
of disease and death. Old Probability predicts not the 
weather alone ! God's agent and vice-president he 
signalizes billow and blast or halycon sea and sky, 
which we call heaven and hell, beyond the horizon's 
verge. The promises are for the good. As from coral 
skeletons rise wide lands, with quiet lagoons, in Pacific 
seas through which a small canvas can go safe for 
hundreds of miles, so the bones of saints become to 
devotees a shelter and support. Only living virtue 
serves forever. The eider-duck lines her nest with 
down plucked from her bosom with her own beak. 
Taken from the bird a moment after death it has lost 
its elasticity, and is worthless as an article of com- 
merce. What we leave to be clone, by what we call 
our will, signifies not like what we do alive. 



signs. 367 

He must be blind to the horoscope, who sees not the 
kingdom of creed passing away. Character is the only 
currency ; and the question is not if }~ou be Christian, 
but what your Christianity means. Every statement 
of spirit is spurious ; every establishment is counter- 
feit coin. Whether our particular religion is more 
than religion in general, or less, becomes a trivial 
debate when words and names, however sacred, are 
altogether in doubt, and none can tell in what his love 
or worship consists. "It is my secret," said Rubin- 
stein. Professed or published, it has deceased. Do we 
never feel that we affront God, in sa}'ing God ? The 
fairies are said to go when we whisper. Your affec- 
tion for me is naught if it need other than your whole 
being as a noiseless tongue. What is it to me, if it 
suffice not to you ? Declared it is spoiled. Give me 
no proof or pledge of a reality, which is stronger than 
all covenants and unsustainable by an}' vow ! But 
the license is a forgery, that would loosen its bond, 
and blasphemes as slavery the marriage which is but 
liberty' in truth. Beaut}' is the sign-manual of deity ; 
and the bald and haggard logic, wielded against that 
wedding of the sexes on which the family is based, 
refutes itself. The grace of God is known by its 
garment of human grace. 

Every tendency is cleared and encouraged by its nat- 
ural sign. Feeling, ebbing into expression, flows back. 
Suffer not the bodily motions of any affection you 
would overcome. Drive appetite from the flesh, and it 
is driven out of the mind ; and the picture-language of 
low passion is rightly made an unlawful trade. Give 
way to fear, and we grow more afraid, and infect with 



368 THE RISING FAITH. 

the magnetism of our terror the animal we drive. Sur- 
render to grief, with its black signals, and it confines 
you like a palsy to your room. Voluntary or involun- 
tary, natural or arbitrary signs are the bridge or vessel 
to communicate your desires to }~our kind. Better 
make a menagerie of the breast than uncage and 
unchain its wild beasts ! Children, that mock and 
make mouths, and wipe off unwelcome salutes, and 
elders that shrug their shoulders, avert their eyes 
and turn their backs, are educating their impatience 
and contempt. But let us not, for courtes}', affect 
what we do not feel ! Bowings and kneelings and 
kerchief-liftings, and an} r uniform by order in church, 
are the same as the Pharisees' phylacteries and long 
robes and street-corner prayers. But of the honest 
signals of love and piet}' let us not be ashamed. Mr. 
Thackeray describes a man's love falling suddenly dead 
in his heart, on discovering in her deportment the 
un worthiness of its object. Beauty, at the touch of 
sensuality or self-complacency, is but a withered bud. 

A true sign of airy emotion is its material side ; and 
so alive, it is inherited as well as its cause, and ster- 
eotyped in a race. Its repetition is like a river running 
to swell the sea. It proves the feeling from which it 
springs. Some people are said to have a good heart ; 
only through the frigid zone of their temperament its 
warmth cannot reach. The}' are like electrical machines 
on a damp day. The cold surface throws ominous 
conjecture on the central heat. The dog that leaps 
to us, curling his body and wagging his tail, has better 
manners than these icebergs of women and crowbars 
of men ; and when I have seen some house-dog, on a 



signs. 369 

cold day, barking at the door to get in, I have thought 
it grateful and polite to him to ring the bell. 

From unconscious signs of goodness what silent 
benedictions ! Said my sister : I saw in a young 
woman, in the car, such benignant expression, I could 
scarce refrain from crying out : Do you know how 
beautiful you are? It is the office of art, romance, 
poetry, the stage, to voice this natural charm. Shall 
we let the semblance exceed the truth? Behold the 
actor, — 

" tears in his eyes, 

A broken voice, and all for nothing, 
All for Hecuba ! 

What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, 
That he should weep for her? " 

But how lukewarm we are, with our unspeakable 
motive for zeal ! How disloyal in our doubt of the 
acceptance of our plea ! I would rather be killed, or 
have nry house broken into, and my dearest ones 
assailed and slain, than dread and suspect assassina- 
tion, burglary and treachery all my life ; and, however 
checked or put back, in my fellow-creatures' capacity 
and temper for high enterprise I will confide, and let 
no worldty scepticism murder my faith. The signs of 
deity are in this poor clay ; and I will trust and act 
with God, not puzzle myself in an endless query if he 
exist ! Do the worshippers of humanity fall into the 
fetichism they denounce, from mistrusting the evidence 
of a supreme in their own souls? Quinet declines 
taking man for his idol ; he has seen him too near ! 
Yet the parent must be owned in the child. They, who 
24 



370 THE RISING FAITH. 

have been in deep places and had great deliverances, 
do not question. In my wilderness came no Satan, as 
to Jesus ; but only the spirit which afterwards min- 
istered to him. Yet, let us greet that inquiry which 
is the downfall of superstition and condition of knowl- 
edge. Its conductors take not awa}~ the Lord : they 
but remove a dead body, to replace it with a living 
soul. But the instinct and intuition are more than 
logic or fact. Our metaphysics match not our impres- 
sions. I skip your speculation ; }~our experience I 
prize. In the Burnt District, in Boston, at first, people 
were lost. But soon the lamp-posts were raised, lights 
kindled and street-names restored, to guide through 
the labyrinth of wreck. Who is it, that plants signs, 
to stream through all our ragged desolations ? It is 
he, who is not without me and would die if I did ; in 
whom I was at the beginning and shall be to the end ; 
who has in every soul which is his substance, a private 
signal that it is above fate and before time, and free 
of doubt and full of life. It is he, whose light is 
shown in the shadows of night and sin ; and who lifts 
upon us his face or gathers us under his wings, as we 
need his illumination and guidance or protection and 
peace. It is he who makes all to be one, and leaves 
none out of himself. It is he who has, beside that of 
all his children, no name ; and needs no tongue to be 
known. About Universal Harmony strange is the 
strife. Men kill each other for miscalling God ! But 
this is his witness too, how deep and sensitive his 
image in the human heart. Ill speaking of our father 
or mother stirs the keenest resentment ; and even 
Jesus was transported into extravagant threat of eter- 



SIGNS. 371 

nal doom without pardon on whoever should gainsay 
the Holy Ghost. The spirit smiles at our heat of 
reproof or warmth of defence. Its everlasting equation 
is to give and forgive. The Christian rule of seventy 
times seven remission of a brother's offence is but a 
line of the goodness which is its law ; and ever} r pure 
affection the glass where infinite Love is self-beheld. 

The test of character is that eternal state which is 
unconscious of the passage of time. Is it sin to lose 
an} T of it ? It is perfection to lose it all ! The sun 
stood still, his chronometer useless, to Joshua in the 
transport of a military triumph ; as an earthquake was 
unheeded in a certain Roman fight. But time is better 
abolished than by a battle. Patience kills it. Christ's 
cross filled no such place in his, as in his followers' 
thoughts ! The crucifixion lasted not so long to him 
as to those around ; to Mary pierced with the prophetic 
sword, to Pilate at cross-purposes with his conscience, 
to the people invoking his blood on their own heads, to 
the mercenary belted soldiers with their spears, and to 
the plotting priests. Those three hours cast heavy 
shadows into their future, which were prelude of his 
paradise ; while, through mortal twinges, played in his 
face a heavenly smile. He had learned the lesson for 
us every one, that time is nought, and life is all. 

I hold up for chief the everlasting signal. Am I 
creature of that which disappears in thought and beaut^y, 
in worship and work ? Neither nature nor art, on any 
dial or with any wheel, can keep the degrees of dura- 
tion to a soul that admires and loves. There are to it 
" no signs of the times." Processions and prophecies 
of events move on an inferior plane to its serene and 



372 THE RISING FAITH. 

immutable vision of joy. Seasons and stars lose their 
office, as measures, in that of pictures ; and the hint 
holds herein its power, that I do not become less, or 
lapse with the hour, but, the more entranced, am the 
more myself; my consciousness more intense, my 
tenure in existence more firm, only my mortality a 
phantom, annihilation an absurdity, and death a dis- 
solving view. This essential being mainly character- 
ized the man, whom no criticism can dislodge from the 
seated faith and rooted honor of the world. How he is 
underrated and mistook as a man of sorrows, and his 
religion a renunciation ! What ghastly prints and 
sculptures of the crucifixion the traveller sees in tem- 
ples and among mountains all through Romish regions, 
with the woe-begone face down which trickle the big, 
bloody drops ! All the paintings of the last agony are 
imperfect, and Rubens's " Descent from the Cross " a 
misrepresentation. It is time for another picture of 
him, who in his suffering could refuse the sponge, like 
some woman in travail wishing to know and under- 
stand her pain ; who could so quietly bequeath John 
and Mary to each other, and who could leave the cross 
in imagination to stand with those at the foot, and 
look at himself from their point of view, out of their 
ignorant eyes, at once spectacle and spectator, to 
plead for the crucifiers, and be both a poet and poem 
of grace and grandeur never else matched. With whom 
of them, that stood about, would he have exchanged 
his situation? 

In this sign slialt thou conquer, in a different sense 
and way from that which Const antine's banners bore, 
on the field. The miracles of endurance have not 



signs. 373 

ceased with the martyrs that followed their head. It 
is often asked how the dying met their doom ; what 
they said, or what was said to prepare them. We 
have learned that no priestly intervention is required. 
The parent of all is preparer too ! With him it is 
profane to interfere. Between the soul and his spirit 
are whispers which the nearest on earth cannot over- 
hear. Not long ago, or far awa} T , b}" any substitute is 
his succor. How we confine him as well as ourselves 
to mediation and mediator and deny his infinity ! But 
he is the Real Presence, and deputes none else. This 
explains the wonders of saintly self-control. The man 
who, insulted or injured, has no resentment or revenge, 
is not wholly here with you, but hidden " in a pavilion 
from the strife of tongues." Absence of mind is pres- 
ence of mind somewhere. Byron describes the Itying 
Gladiator as far away, from the arena of blood, with 
his " young barbarians all at pla}~," in another game 
beside that of the cruel circus for which he had been 
enrolled. God pitches his tent not only in heaven, but 
in the human heart ; and into it is our blessed, ever- 
ready and final escape. 

What is the universe but a many-colored sign ? To 
the doubt of benignity, the answer is beauty, that per- 
suades me even pain is a dividend. If nature's com- 
motion, in which she is not carried away, teaches law, 
her calm hints liberty, with foot or fanc} T , to go where 
we will. Strange, so vast a chamber, of earth and sea 
and sk} T , can be so still ! Looking at the Fall-prospect 
from a rock}" hill, the dying leaves, whose vividness and 
gradation of color no prism, no Roman or Florentine 
mosaic could match, and no vernal tints equal, I think 



374 THE RISING FAITH. 

the old man's death-bed should be handsomer than 
the infant's crib ! What carnal can compare with the 
imaginative service of the scene ? A little grass is grown 
within the girdle of my view ; some loads of corn and 
potatoes go to the barn ; and I see the oxen, like ghosts 
on the distant beach, hauling kelp to manure the fields. 
Was it for this the grand promontoiy, with its chines 
of trap and granite, deep gorges and huge cliffs, was 
by tremendous tools of flood and fire shaped, through 
millions of years ? God pitches his tent in the land- 
scape as in the soul ! He waits not for science to de- 
monstrate him, and asks not leave of the logician to be. 
He comes not to insure his life at the editor's office. 
The curtains of his pavilion reach beyond my sight, 
and, as I gaze, it seems to me worth no man's while to 
print his argument to prove immortality a dream. The 
campers on the shore take their tents with them when 
they go ; so shall we carry that pavilion of his away 
from the sound of the strife of tongues. Meantime, as 
a child runs from strangers to hide its head in its 
mother's gown, w r e seek in all trouble the foldings of 
an unseen robe : and, if a joint experience be the stuff 
of which it is woven, we learn how sweet a song com- 
mon sorrow sings. 



XVI. 

IDEAS. 

WE conclude resting in the importance of ideas ; first, 
to union, for which we have in the Evangelical 
Alliance and Free Religion two hints that dogmas or de- 
nials do not suffice. The marvel was of the metropolitan 
meetings held by the first, which newspapers of continen- 
tal circulation reported to millions of readers, that none of 
the old articles was put forward with any promise of stout 
defence. Not a characteristic point of Calvinism was hon- 
ored with trivial mention ; no voice was heard to chant the 
nursery-rhyme, — 

In Adam's fall 

We sinned all ; 

no song of total depravity, everlasting punishment, arbi- 
trary decrees, unconditional election, infant damnation ; 
except in a parting salvo, scarce a lisp of the trinity, the 
atonement by blood, the plenary verbal inspiration of the 
Bible, or the partial favor of the Holy Ghost. 

Under the attacks of this piratical craft of science, and 
the broadsides of this privateer of rationalism, the ancient 
convoy of doctrine has surrendered, like a fleet of wooden 
ships to a couple of iron-clads. Though the alliance fell 
short of catholicity, it was a fine omen to see the walls of 
Congregation and Presbytery, Methodism and Episcopacy, 
English Establishment and Dissent, falling to make one 
(375) 



376 THE RISING FAITH. 

common building like your musical Coliseum, or the Pan- 
theon in the Eternal City, that welcomed every god ; while 
an insurrection against exclusiveness in the Baptist church 
threatens to break the line that encloses, like a military 
cordon, the Lord's supper for saints, and let in the sinners 
with whom alone he seemed to care to eat. The hearty 
greetings of good fellowship between land-and-ocean- 
sundered worshippers stirred the blood, and seemed to 
predict the millennium, and be a foretaste of heaven. 
Nevertheless, with all the gush of sentiment, devotion to 
God and human good, and ardent faith in Jesus the Christ, 
in the public speeches the planks to stand on were miss- 
ing ; and a creed wanted might be the bulletin of those 
enthusiastic Christians that made the temples ring and the 
land resound with their hundred thousand voices. 

But a creed is wanted by Free Religion, no less. I haye 
seen in the pasture some mighty block of granite by the 
action of the elements crumbled to a gravel -heap, and that 
wasting into a rope of sand. So the old theology has 
crumbled under the elemental agency of natural science, 
radicalism, and free religion. But what is put in the place 
of this great boidder of the ancient faith ? Whatever private 
inspiration may be, as yet nothing, as a bond of society 
or generally accepted belief; and the German Dr. Strauss 
holds the freethinkers incompetent to form a church. But 
a church, a sympathy of conviction, a fellowship of truth, 
a common vision, is essential to mankind, that it may not 
be disintegrated and scattered into individuals, each after 
his selfish good, saying the devil take the hindmost to all 
the rest. 

Free Religion has its mission. It gives us criticism, it 
adds to our scholarship, it has great ability and the virtue 



IDEAS. 377 

of sincerity, it vindicates liberty, it is conscientious and 
humane. But it frees rather than feeds us. We cannot 
live on negations ; and on no affirmations do its handful 
of advocates agree, save the grand one of right to investi- 
gate. One defines religion as the effort at self-perfection ; 
another, as the desire ; and a third insists there must be 
an idea and object of perfection beyond ourselves. 

Some of them maintain that true religion requires no 
belief in God or the immortality of the soul, and glory in 
that name or nickname of u infidel," usually resented as a 
term of reproach. Not man the noblest work of God, but 
God the noblest work of man ; and the fit dedication of a 
temple to man, rather than God, are opinions among them 
freely uttered without protest. 

I am giving extreme utterances, and describing without 
blame ; for the right to express honest persuasion, I would 
for no man or woman call, or suffer to be called, in doubt. 

But my religious nature is not nourished by this litera- 
ture. My curiosity is stung, my brain stimulated, my 
prejudices disturbed, my superstitions dispelled, but my 
heart is not edified or my sorrow consoled ; and I have to 
flee to David and St. Augustine, to the Mohammedan and 
Hindoo mystics, to dark corridors of German piety, to 
clear strains of adoration, in the English church, of William 
Law and Jeremy Taylor, to gospel and epistle of the New 
Testament, holding whatever mixture of error, for the food 
I cannot get out of the refuse and ash-heap of the ob- 
jector's laboratory, from whose crucial experiment the 
vital principle has escaped. Without the religious senti- 
ment there is no union among men, whatever covenant of 
policy, or treaty for offence or defence. In the expression 
of piety, some radical authors are unsurpassed. O my 



378 THE RISING FAITH. 

brother or sister, do you worship or aspire? Are you 
humble before the author of your being, and its infinite end ? 
Does the ideal of beauty overhang you, and the image 
of truth allure, and eternal goodness inflame ? I am with 
you ; I bow likewise. Our hands or lips may never meet. 
I may no more wish to fold you in my arms than to 
embrace a star in the sky, yet I honor you with unspoken 
and unspeakable regard. The sound of your voice is an 
audible, and the sight of your face a noiseless benediction. 
But for ostentation I would kneel at your feet ! The spirit 
that moves you is dearer to me than my blood, " the ruddy 
drops that visit my sad heart ;" and your example steadies 
me in the path of duty. As in old time the winding of a 
hunter's horn in the wood has guided a stray companion 
out of the thicket and away from the precipice, so because 
you blew your loyal trumpet so clear I have not fallen or 
lost my way. Cell joins not to cell closer in the wonderful 
little bricks that build the living frame, than soul joins to 
soul. But this religious sentiment, which steadies a man 
and enables him to uphold his friends, as Alpine travellers 
are secured together by a cord, is no air-plant. It must 
be rooted in some conception of the Divine ; and he is the 
benefactor who refreshes us with new glimpses of Deity. 
I respect him who explodes misconceptions of God. I 
revere him who introduces me to the Supreme, and who 
convinces me there is in the creation a boundless charm. 

" Nothing shall disturb my cheerful faith 
That all is full of blessings." 

When William Wordsworth wrote that, he knew the secret 
of the universe. 

You want to know me? Acquaint me with your 



IDEAS. 379 

divinity, I shall be intimate with you ! If he be holy and 
gracious, his devotee shall have my confidence. You are 
as trustworthy as what has your homage. 

But it is said practical goodness alone is of any account. 
No matter what a man thinks ; the good are of all opinions 
in all denominations ; a man's character has nothing to do 
with his creed. There could be no falser maxim No 
surer is the body of a creature to follow his head, the ship 
to mind her helm, the train to glide after the engine, than 
the life to be chiselled and moulded by the idea. No worth 
or wickedness done, but is first imagined, rehearsed as an 
actor's part before the audience comes, on the stage within. 
Every murder, theft, adultery, and every mercy, generosity, 
self-sacrifice, is dictated by and conformed to some inward 
plan and pattern, be the performance however sudden or 
slow. I knew a materialist, whose view of a woman's honor 
was painted in the chambers of his mind by his disbelief 
in any thing but the body ; and he owned his principles 
and practice as the logical result of denying any spirit 
we come from or any soul in us to survive. His inference 
was natural from materialism, however many materialists 
may be saved by a purer instinct from his profligate fault. 
Accordingly it seems a just and philosophical inquiry, which 
sectarian tree in the great religious orchard brings forth 
the best fruit. If there be a denominational variety, like 
some none-such or seek-no-further apple, or the Tokay or 
Burgundy grape, that would bear off the prize in the World's 
Fair of virtue ; and the victory would be not only for the 
splendid product, but the intellectual or spiritual seed from 
which it grew. So the unsettled claim is made for the 
Romish, evangelical, or rational planting as producing 
the superior result. It has been said, in the defalcations, 



880 THE RISING FAITH. 

embezzlements, and grand cheatings in public and private 
life, radicals in religion have had no hand : all the great 
villains have belonged to the great orthodox bodies of 
Christians. A friend at my elbow said there were some 
exceptions : he had known radical thieves ! But even rad- 
icals have no monopoly of merit. I think they have their 
full share. There are not enough of them, in comparison 
with the overwhelming numbers of their adversaries, for 
a test how transcendently good they would be if they ever 
got the upper hand, and were in the majority. Some of them 
now are not lowly, sweet-tempered, or devout. Certainly 
they are not all saints ! Noble qualities abound among 
them, of candor, courage, — that best sort, the courage of 
one's opinions, better than bravery in battle, — a sensitive 
conscience, and moral independence, added to clearness of 
thought and splendor of speech. But they do not wholly 
lack a sufficiently good opinion of themselves, a conceit 
of their van ward position, some acrimony and pride, and 
a supercilious estimate of their opponents, such as made a 
woman of their number call her theological antagonists 
geese. But, without humility, no worth ! If the match of 
doctrine is to be decided by personal traits and behavior, 
they have still something to do to win the spurs and bear 
off the laurels without dispute. We have heard of the 
underground railroad. There is an underground telegraph. 
Beware what its lightning carries of your case ! 

TTn question ably, too, the evangelical party have not act- 
ually won in the spiritual race. Said a noble lady to me, 
" Those people that keep quoting Scripture to you all the 
time are old hypocrites ; " and the way crimes are, in the 
ministry or laity, condoned and covered up is the saddest 
omen for the church, and augury of some crash and downfall 



IDEAS. 381 

of our proudest ecclesiastical establishments. The virtue we 
clamor for now is not purity, but decency ; and decency is 
to keep the evil out of sight, sweep it into a corner, brick 
it over with complimentary resolutions and mock investiga- 
tions, farces and shams, as foul drains in the neighborhood 
of dwellings are choked and walled in till they breed typhus, 
cholera, and plague. If Christianity, under pretext of charity 
and forgiveness, means such perilous concealment in moral 
sepulchres, I am not a Christian ; and hypocrisy must have 
gone pretty far when one could say, and have it printed, in 
England, " I never knew a clergyman tell the truth." If 
from policy Orthodoxy defends corruption, it is but as the 
smiling village on Vesuvius, to be destroyed by the next 
eruption ; and there are eruptions beside those from moun- 
tain craters ! If Liberality be license for laxity of principle 
in business or deportment, it is but that same Satan who so 
liberally offered in exchange for the worship of himself all 
the kingdoms, with all their glory, of the world. But, 
strike the balance as you will, out of our several ideas our 
diverse conduct finely or fatally proceeds. 

But not union or adoration or morality is with some 
the object of life : happiness is the aim. Yet an Ideal is 
needful, too, fbr that. That able English logician, John 
Stuart Mill, just deceased, amid the chorus of his disciples' 
praise, professed himself not an idealist, but utilitarian, 
judging all things, not from instinct or intuition, or any un- 
derstood religion, — the word being odious to him, — but by 
the consequences. He was a man of intellectual conscience, 
political purity, and business honesty ; incorruptible in civil 
trust, though it added not to his honor, nor was according 
to the Christian standard, to win another man's wife to his 
side. But he declares, in his autobiography, he was brought 



382 THE EISIXG FAITH. 

up to regard Christianity as a foreign affair, like any ancient 
system; a method of training the young that flouts the 
Providence which intends an influence, from the atmosphere 
we were born in, unfortunately missed by this remarkable 
man. But by his doctrine of expediency was he blessed ? 
There is no picture more pathetic than his haunting, on 
the French borders, at Avignon, the tomb of the woman he 
wedded and worshipped, inconsolable, unable to lift his eyes 
to any heaven she had gone to, or to own any Infinite 
Spirit from whom she had come, nothing but a cinder of 
humanity left. I w r ould rather be the humblest believer in an 
all -wise derivation and a celestial destiny than, with such a 
desolated soul, the writer of the "Political Economy" and 
u System of Logic," in this absence of faith. In Mount 
Auburn is what is called the Receiving Tomb, to bury 
strangers. How mournfully it stands apart from the spot 
where your precious ashes repose ! But, on Mr. Mill's 
ground, we are all strangers, and all nature the receiving 
tomb. The world will thank him as an advocate of woman's 
civil rights and man's civil liberty, but not for any proof 
or example that this whole human being is a boon. Re- 
ligiously true to conviction, yet the sky-chamber which lets 
in eternal light was wanting in his brain. 

Spiritual ideas are " the glories of our birth and state." 
There are freethinkers of the material school as noble men 
and women in their dealings as any that breathe on the 
globe ; but veracity and justice in affairs are not the only 
good qualities ; and if materialism or rationalism means no 
faith in a Father or final home, it is a sad dogma and dismal 
unbelief. A child's faith is better. It is related of Augustus 
Hare, that, trying in vain with his little companion at play 
to steady the cart they had drawn up their troop of tin sol- 



IDEAS. 383 

diers in, he ran away and brought back a silver crucifix 
and beads his Italian nurse had given him, and cried, 
" Flere is what will manage this and every thing else in 
the world." There was a sublime implication in the boyish 
speech ! Had the self-sacrifice of the cross been put into 
larger vehicles, we should be spared such miserable over- 
turnings and melancholy failures as desolate the land 
to-day, and threaten poverty and wintry want. The 
Christian idea will save us ; for any idea, sincerely held, 
goes into practice, as it did with the Quakers, and does 
with the Russian Mennonites, in the duty of Peace. 
Christianity creates not, but typifies and illustrates the 
Ideal, old as the creation in the soul ; and, as Christian in 
these last days in some quarters has come to be a sign of 
narrowness and term of reproach, it may be worth while to 
remember, whatever triumphs of new revelation the future 
may have in store, — rich and abundant may they be ! — no 
religion has yet succeeded like it in embodying the principle 
of loving self-renunciation in the common mind. Grant 
the idolatry and superstition in some of its manifestations ; 
but let me be a superstitious idolater, if there is but this 
alternative, instead of an atheist, materialist, unbeliever, 
or Sadducee even of the nineteenth century, with no 
advantage, that I can perceive, over one in the first. 

Our religion does bear fruit in the community where it 
prevails. In a neighboring State a man was observed 
secreting meat under his cloak at a stall. A policeman fol- 
lowed him, and peeping through the window of his hovel 
saw him give the meat to his children, who instantly de- 
voured it raw. The heart melted under the star on the 
policeman's breast, and he went and reported the facts to 
the butcher, who sent him back with a large basket of meat, 



384 THE RISING FAITH. 

and money to buy fuel to cook it. In the mist that came 
over my eyes, I read no more in the newspaper that day ! 
The financial affairs of Rhode Island and New York, the 
Count de Chambord's letter about the French throne, the 
Spanish court and Cuba, with the war in Ashantee, and 
the rate of discount in the Bank of England, all the great 
doings in capital letters of the wide world faded away 
before this paragraph in small print at the lowermost cor- 
ner. It was the spiritual idea carried into operation by 
what we call a common man ! But will some scientific man 
now say I have no right to such ideas ; I have not verified 
them by any process of logic or sense ? I shall only an- 
swer : I am an idealist ; that, in the natural history of 
vegetable, animal, human kingdoms he talks so much of, is 
my classification, the sort of creature I am ; and he might 
as well question my horse's right to his mane, a fish's to its 
fins, a bird's to its plumage, or a turtle's to its spotted shell, 
as mine to my impressions, cut and kindled at the core 
of my being, of divinity, and my anticipations of immor- 
tality. Gentlemen, scientists, and sextons, I decline your 
office ! The German Strauss and French Renan overstrain 
my credulity in asking me to believe that the Christian 
faith in immortality is built on an iUusion, as if the Lord 
used such refuse timber. Robert Burns sings the true les- 
son of higher devotion: — 

" Although thou maun never be mine, 
Although even hope is denied, 
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing 
Than aught in the world beside." 

Nelson had want of frigates, Queen Mary Calais, and 
the dying soldier the Emperor, graven in the heart ; but 
deeper still lies this fellowship of the soul, container and 
uncontained. 



IDEAS. 385 

Before the war of emancipation, there was, at the South, 
a black man so thirsty for freedom he had himself enclosed 
in a wooden box for the carriage that might prove his 
coffin, preferring to be shipped as merchandise to being 
traded about as a man. After being long time tossed 
among bales of goods, and thrown out roughly like a crate 
or trunk, he arrived at the appointed place, where friendly 
hands drew the nails of the lid, and, as he uncoiled to 
stand upright, breathless lips cried out, a He breathes ! " 
But, before his being lifted from the small dwelling with its 
scant means of living, did the board casket hold the whole 
of the man ? Xo : the thought, the will, the soul, which 
make the man. was out after the north-star, and already, 
in hope, in the land of liberty : nor was any one, that sat 
comfortably or walked at pleasure in car or vessel, wider 
in the range of his mind than he who lay curled up and 
cramped between the pine slabs like a corpse to himself. 
'Was all of him in the little cubic space, as much as though 
the contents had been the sugar made with the sweat of 
the slave, in winch " nobody tasted blood " ? Had he ex- 
pired on the way, would any atom of him have been left 
in the coarse vehicle, or would what constitutes the integ- 
rity of this miraculous human creature, needing to seek no 
miracles beyond itself, have escaped entire ? AVhat story 
of Marquette or Pocahontas so romantic as his surviving 
to cross the sea, stir up English philanthropy, the boy 
Hnry. with no surname, becoming a lecturer by profession 
in the proudest of lands ! I should think he. that had such 
deliverance from his voluntary sepulchre, would not doubt 
his resurrection from any actual tomb ! " We are such 
stuff as dreams are made of; " but, mighty poet, what is 
that ? Is aught in the rock more solid, in the light more 



350 THE RISING FAITH. 

subtle, in the firmament more stable, or more fiery in the 
sun ? That play of " The Tempest " was a dream and forg- 
ery of the brain, of nothing that ever took place on land 
or sea, yet shall outlast all the parliaments, Westminster 
Abbey, and every ship in the Thames ; and we, dreamy 
creatures, thanking God that we can dream, after "our 
little life is rounded with a sleep," 

" Shall we not meet as heretofore 
Some summer morning ? " 

As surely as God and Destiny are not fancies, but ideas 
of the human mind ! Of all Being, duty is a common 
term ; and I believe in no deity who can do without his 
children, more than his children without him. 



MESSES. EOBEKTS BEOTHEES' PUBLICATIONS. 

RADICAL PROBLEMS. By Rev. C. A. Bartol, 
D.D. One volume, 16mo. Cloth. Price $2. 

Contents. — Open Questions; Individualism; Transcendentalism; 
Radicalism; Theism; Naturalism; Materialism; Spiritualism; Faith; 
Law; Origin; Correlation; Character; Genius: Father Taylor; Expe- 
rience; Hope; Ideality. 

From the Liberal Christian. 

"What a wonderful, wonderful book is the " Radical Problems." We are 
not a third through it yet, and Heaven only knows where and how we shall 
find ourselves at the end of the journey. Already are we so shocked, 
stunned, bewildered, edified, delighted, — in short, thorougnly, thoroughly 
bewitched, — that we have no words to express ourselves. . . . That this 
book has a long life before it who can doubt, or that it will cause a grand 
commotion in the theological world? It will be impetuously attacked and 
vehemently defended, but will survive alike the onslaught of its assailants 
and the intemperate zeal of its defenders ; and will be the fruitful source 
of many a brilliant essay and inspiring discourse and stimulating and 
suggestive club-talk, long, long after its gentle and gifted author has left 
us to receive a most cordial welcome by his brother thinkers in brighter 
spheres. 

From the Commonwealth. 

Spirituality, purity, gentleness, love, child-like simplicity, bless and 
sanctify him; but he is spirited as well as spiritual. In his gentleness 
there is a quick vivacity, and he sometimes exhibits a keen incisiveness 
as of whetted steel. His aim is not so much to solve as to suggest. He is 
no dogmatist, nor is he an expositor or judge. He finds open questions, 
and delights to leave them open questions still. Meantime he looks into 
them with the eyes of his inmost soul, discerns much, throws out a pro- 
fusion of glancing and irradiating suggestions that open the questions 
farther instead of closing them, then retires to look elsewhere. . . . This 
man carries eternal summer in the eyes, and sees beds of violets in snow- 
banks. His own climate is his world, and he can make no excursions out 
of it. A pleasant world it is, with no deserts, jungles, reeking bogs, foul, 
ravening creatures, and poles heaped with ice. As some will see only with 
the physical eye, so he with the spiritual only. 

From the Globe. 
It contains seventeen chapters, honestly representing the individual 
spiritual experience of the author, and at the same time indicating some 
of the intellectual tendencies of the time. It is " radical," not in the usual 
sense of the word, but in its true sense, that of attempting to pierce to the 
roots of things. Many of the opinions and ideas expressed in the book may 
be repudiated by the conservative reader, but its spirit and aim cannot 
fail to charm and invigorate him. Dr. Bartol, indeed, is one of those men 
who have religious genius as well as religious faith. . . . The book is a 
protest against popular theology, made from what the writer considers 
the standpoint of true and pure religion. We have considered it from a 
literary point of view, and, thus considered, its wealth of thought and 
imaginative illustration entitle it to a high rank among the publications 
of the year. 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSES. ROBERTS BEOTHEES' PUBLICATIONS, 

THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. By The- 

ophilus Parsons, Author of " Deus Homo/' &c. One neat 
16mo volume. Cloth. Price $1.00. 

" No one can know," says the author, " better than I do, how poor and 
dim a presentation of a great truth my words must give. But I write them 
in the hope that they may suggest to some minds what may expand in 
their minds into a truth, and, germinating there, grow and scatter seed- 
truth widely abroad. I am sure only of this: The latest revelation offers 
truths and principles which promise to give to man a knowledge of the 
laws of his being and of his relation to God, — of the relation of the Infinite 
to the Finite. . . . And therefore I believe that it will gradually, — it may 
be very slowly, so utterly does it oppose man's regenerate nature, — but it 
will surely, advance in its power and in its influence, until, in its own 
time, it becomes what the sun is in unclouded noon." 

From tlie Chicago Republican. 
Few writers have obtained a more enviable reputation in this country 
than the author of this little book, and few are more justly entitled to 
consideration. His works upon jurisprudence are to be found in almost 
every public and private law library in the country ; while his writings 
upon Christian philosophy and the science of religion are universally re- 
ceived as models of close and logical reasoning by those even who differ from 
him in the form of their religious belief. . . . Mr. Parsons has been pro- 
nounced to be k ' the most fascinating interpreter of the writings of Swe- 
denborg," and the present volume will add to rather than detract from a 
reputation to which he is so justly entitled. The defects of the work are 
only such as necessarily attach to the subject itself. The finite cannot 
grasp the infinite, but the author has accomplished this: he leads the 
reader through new and pleasant paths of thought into the boundless 
immensity that surrounds us, where the mind, freed frem the idea that the 
only source of spiritual truth is a revelation, the interpretation of which 
is limited to a prescribed class, feels and acknowledges the power of the 
infinite in newer, simpler, and not less holy truths. 

From tJie New York Evening Post, 
Professor Parsons, in his little work, does not undertake to controvert 
the huge volumes that have been written upon the philosophical problem 
of the Infinite and the Absolute : he merely attempts to show us how the 
problem has been treated by his master, Swedenborg. He has a profound 
feneration for the teachings of that illustrious seer, and his expositions 
>f these teachings have the merit of unusual clearness and simplicity. 
. . . Whatever difficulties the reader encounters in his pages are dirn- 
eulties inherent in the subjects themselves, and not in his methods of eluci- 
dation. Any one accustomed to think at all upon deep religious questions 
will be able to understand what he means, though he may not be disposed 
to accept his conclusions. And the inquirer who simply wishes to be in- 
' formed of the general scope and purport of Swedenborg's remarkable dis- 
closures will find few better helps than the small and unpretending volumeg 
of Professor Parsons. 

♦— 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSRS. KOBEKTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 

AD CLE RUM : Advices to a Young Preacher. By 
Joseph Parker, D.D., Author of "Ecce Deus." One vol- 
ume, 16mo. Uniform with "Ecce Deus." Price $1.50. 

From the Lutheran Observer. 
We do not know how to begin or where to end our commendation of thia 
book. . . . No one in the ministry, or looking forward to the pulpit, should 
fail to get it. He may have Porter, Vinet, Kidder, and Shedd, but lie can- 
not afford to do withou; "Ad Cieruin," which is complemental of all the 
rest. 

From Rev. Geo. W. Eaton, D.D., President of Hamilton Theological Seminary. 
I have perused it with delighted interest. Though not quite in sym- 
pathy with the flippancy and hyperbolical statements which occur here 
and there in the volume, its instructions are on the whole healthy, per- 
tinent, and " put " in a form charming and impressive. I know of no work 
connected with homiletical literature which contains so much of valuable 
and timely instruction in a compass so small and compact. 

ROMAN IMPERIALISM, and other Lectures and 
Essays. By J. R. Seelet, M.A., Author of "Ecce Homo." 
One volume, 16mo. Uniform with "Ecce Homo." Price 
$1.50. 

From the St. Louis Journal of Education. 
The author of " Ecce Homo " has been pronounced the typical writer 
of the present time. Those who have read his former work — and who has 
not? — will give this a cordial welcome. The Essays entitled "Liberal 
Education in Universities," "English in Schools," and "The Teaching 
of Politics," challenge the attention of educators; while " The Church as a 
Teacher of Morality" will excite some of the fierce criticism that followed 
the publication of " Ecce Homo." 

From the Pacific. 
The Essay in this volume on " English in Schools " we hope will receive 
attention from educators. It is shameful that so little tlwrough knowledge 
is imparted in our high schools, and even colleges, of our own tongue. Mul- 
titudes of young ladies, accomplished in many other respects, are wofully 
deficient in this ; while graduates of colleges almost innumerable know more 
of the meaning, derivation, and power of Greek and Latin words and 
phrases than of their own native English. 

By Joel Benton. 
A new book from the pen of the author of " Ecce Homo " is not by any 
means a slight literary work. The memory of that exquisite picture set 
in the clearest crystal of polished thought — a perfection of art and logic — 
lingers as the faint, sweet aroma which recalls a wonderful but departed 
flower. In an age that seeks to analyze and reconstruct our dearest 
traditions, and re-base religion itself, it took, and still holds, a prominent 
place. 

Sold everywhere Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston 



MESSKS. KOBEKTS BEOTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 

THE PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRA- 
DITION. By Frederic Henry Hedge, D.D., Author o! 
" Reason in Religion." One volume, 16mo. Price $1.50. 

From tlie New York Tribune. 
Mr. Hedge may be called an eclectic : not as one who picks from dif- 
ferent systems the detached bits that suit him, and then joins them skilfully 
together; but as one who, committing himself unreservedly to neither sys- 
tem, endeavors by independent and cultivated insight to get at the deepest 
truth contained in formulas, creeds, and institutions. His faith is wholly 
in reason : he will prove all things, and hold fast only what is good ; but 
his crucibles are various in size and quality, his tests are of many kinds, 
and his reason combines the action of as many intellectual faculties as he 
can bring into play. His faith is planted in a firm but gracious Theism, 
moral like that of Moses, and loving like that of Christ. The belief in a 
divine origin, education, guidance, and discipline of the world, runs through 
his pages ; and a conviction of the moral capabilities and of the spiritual 
destination of man shines in his argument and ennobles the conclusion. 
Those who do not agree with the book need not be otfended by it ; and they 
who do agree with it will be charmed by the beauty in which what they 
regard as truth is converted. 

From the London (Eng.) Enquirer. 
We have been unable to criticise because we find ourselves throughout 
in entire sympathy and agreement with the writer. We cordially commend 
Dr. Hedge's book as the best solution we have ever seen of the difficult 
problems connected with the primeval Scripture record, and as an admi- 
rable illustration of the spirit of reverent constructive criticism. Such a 
work as this is almost like a new revelation of the divine worth of the 
ancient Hebrew Traditions, and their permanent relation to the higher 
thought and progress of the world. 

AMERICAN RELIGION. By John Weiss. One 
volume, 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. 

From the Philadelphia Press. 
Himself a clergyman, Mr. Weiss writes understanding^ upon a very 
Bolemn theme. His closing chapter, entitled " The American Soldier," is 
one cf the noblest and truest tributes to the patriots of 1861-65 ever put into 
print. 

From the Chicago Tribune. 
Mr. Weiss has presented to the public a scheme for an American religion 
which, it is almost needless to say, is a religion of the intellect adapted to 
the highest form of American culture, and not pervaded to any great degree 
with spirituality, as the term is understood among orthodox believers. 
... If Mr. Weiss had christened his scheme " American Morality," we 
would gladly have hailed his discovery. As it is, we cannot but commend 
its loftiness of purpose. It is a work full of noble thought, and, however 
much the reader may disagree with it from a religious point of view, there 
are very few who can fail to be struck with its purity of aim and its healthy 
moral tone ; while the merely literary reader will derive equal gratification 
from the scholarly style and the richness of illustration and research it dis- 
plays. The last chapter but one, "Constancy to an Ideal," is one of the 
finest and noblest essays ever written by an American, and deserves to be 
read and heeded by every American. 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 



The To-Morrow of Death ; 

OR, 

THE FUTURE LIFE ACCORDING 
TO SCIENCE. 

By LOUIS FIGUIER. 

Translated from the French, by S. R. Crocker, i vol. i6mo. $1.73. 



Front the Literary World. 
As its striking, if somewhat sensational title indicates, the book deals with the 
question of the future life, and purports to present " a complete theory of Nature, 
a true philosophy of the Universe." It is based on the ascertained facts of science 
which the author marshals in such a multitude, and with such skill, as must com- 
mand the admiration of those who dismiss his theory with a sneer. We doubt if 
the marvels of astronomy have ever had so impressive a presentation in popular 
form as they have here. . . . 

The opening chapters of the book treat of the three elements which compose 
man, — body, soul, and life. The first is not destroyed by death, but simply changes 
its form ; the last is a force, like light and heat, — a mere state of bodies ; the soul 
is indestructible and immortal. After death, according to M. Figuier, the soul be- 
comes krcarnated in a new body, and makes part of a new being next superior to 
man in the scale of living existences, — the superhuman. This being lives in the 
eiher which surrounds the earth and the other planets, where, endowed with senses 
and faculties like ours, infinitely improved, and many others that we know nothing 
of, he leads a life whose spiritual delights it is impossible for us to imagine. . . . 
Those who enjoy speculations about the future life will find in this book fresh and 
pleasant food for their imaginations ; and, to those who delight in the revelations 
of science as to the mysteries that obscure the origin and the destiny of man, these 
pages offer a gallery of novel and really marvellous views. We may, perhaps, ex- 
press our opinion of "The To-Morrow of Death" at once comprehensively and 
concisely, by saying that to every mind that welcomes light on these grave ques- 
tions, from whatever quarter and in whatever shape it may come, regardless of 
precedents and authorities, this work will yield exquisite pleasure. It will shock 
some readers, and amaze many ; but it will fascinate and impress all. 



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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers" Publications. 

THOREAU: 

THE POET-NATURALIST. 

With Memorial Verses. 

By WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 

I vol. i6mo. Price $2.00. 



From the Churchman. 
Mr. Charming has the most important qualifications for writing a book on 
Thoreau. He understands him, sympathizes with all his peculiarities, and has 
made a thorough study of his writings. This volume will serve as a key to much 
that has seemed strange in the conduct and in the words of the hermit philosopher, 
and will, no doubt, be eagerly read by his many admirers. It gives a vivid picture 
of the man, and furnishes, by means of numerous anecdotes, and frequent quo- 
tations from his writings, a comparatively full history of both his outward and 

inward life. 

From tJie Liberal Christian. 

He stands forth especially as the lover and interpreter of Nature. What man 
ever saw more of the great Mother's mysteries than he ? He knew all the birds, 
animals, flowers,- shrubs, trees within walking distance of his home. He loved 
the world in all its phases and varieties, as few men love human beings. Nothing 
transpired which did not excite his curiosity and interest. He " could not pass a 
berry, nor fail to ask a question." " His habit was to go abroad a portion of each 
day to fields or woods or the river : ' I go out to see what I have caught in my 
traps which I set for facts.' " Yet he had the deepest reverence for Nature, and 
sought to penetrate her secrets with no conceited impertinence. 

From the Springfield Republican. 
Altogether the most unique American book of the year, or for several years, 
is Mr. Channing's memoir of his friend Thoreau, lately published by Roberts in 
a volume of 370 pages. It defies analysis and eludes criticism, being without 
method, and quite lawless in its style and aim ; a miscellaneous collection of facts 
and fancies, prose and verse, passages from Thoreau, and from a hundred other 
authors, — yet running through it always the thread of personal interest in the man 
of genius described or describing himself. For it is now time, as it was not, per- 
haps, ten years ago, when Mr. Emerson printed his brief sketch of Thoreau, to 
recognize how rare and original was the genius of his friend, whom it has been 
the fashion to speak of as an imitator of Emerson. 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 




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